Kayak fisherman apparently goes that extra inch to win

Published 11:39 pm Thursday, June 7, 2018

Back in the wild west days of bass tournaments, cheating may not have been accepted but it sure was expected.

Jackpot tournaments were held on just about every lake every weekend in the spring and summer. The money typically was not great, but in an era when minimum wage was $3.35, $100 or $200 for a win was good money. That created an incentive.

When the sponsored big bass tournaments came along and the prizes climbed into the thousands of dollars, cheating became even more prolific. Things like lead weights shoved into a fish’s gut or a pen of big fish stashed under a dock to be secretly retrieved during an event were just some of the techniques used.

They worked for a while. The problem with thieves is that they often get greedy. If they succeed once, they cannot help but go back for more. Then the problem becomes two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. Word got out. Or the rest of the field would notice when the same person won weekend after weekend, while during the week that same fisherman could not catch the bottom of the lake.

Lie detectors, at least for major tournaments, put the whoa on cheating to a certain degree. Well, lie detectors and the fact Texas made it criminally illegal to cheat in a tournament. That came following an episode on Lake O’the Pines in 1984 in which four men were accused of buying bass in Florida and bringing them to Texas to win the event. All from Louisiana, three pled guilty in federal court. The fourth committed suicide the day before he was to testify against the others.

Since the fish were brought across state lines to commit a crime, that made it a federal offense. If it is a state crime, the case can range from a Class A misdemeanor with penalties including a fine and jail time to a third degree felony if the tournament prize is valued at $10,000 or more.

Although it has not completely disappeared, cheating seems to have slowed down through the years. Part of that is probably because the law, the lie detectors and that most tournaments are larger with more experienced management.

That does not mean on any given weekend someone is not going to try. Take, for instance, an April kayak tournament on Walter E. Long Lake near Austin.

Kayak tournaments are a relatively new thing, and because of the nature of the vessel, they have adopted different rules designed to protect the fish.

Kayaks do not have livewells like traditional bass boats, so there is no place to keep catches, at least alive until they are weighed. So kayak fishermen use a system in which they place the bass on a belly board to measure and photograph it. They are then awarded a weight based on the fish’s length. Altering the weight is a moot point since the fish are not brought to shore for a typical weigh-in.

What was thought as a way to prevent cheating, the fishermen are assigned a card or some other form of daily identification that must be included in the pictures to show they are from the day of the tournament.

In a bizarre case, a fisherman in this tournament was accused of doctoring the length of the fish using a second bass tail that he laid over his catch’s tail. He hid the cut with his off hand, changing the magic term from slight of hand to slide of hand.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game wardens investigated and found the false tail in the fisherman’s boat. According to wardens, the man initially said he found the tail floating on the water and was going to turn it in. He later admitted to the scam.

The fisherman may have been on the wardens’ radar already as they said they were investigating potential fishing tournament fraud not only in Travis County where the tournament was held, but also in Bastrop County.

Reports indicate the fisherman was charged with cheating in the tournament along with possession of a small amount of marijuana. It was not mentioned whether the marijuana was for personal use or being used as a fish attractant. Looking at the picture of the tail stretched down the measuring board, it does look like the fish was one toke over the line for its body size.