Western Cheatin’ Techniques?

Interesting westernbass.com thread a BassParader pointed us to (thanks!) after he saw the pet carrier post. Seems folks out west were wondering if a couple things a fisherman saw and photographed on the Cal Delta could be examples of derby cheating:

[I] have stumbled twice on some shady crap. First when the water was pumping out of Old River and some wood pushed up against the bank at Widows Island exposing a fish barrel. Two weeks later I was in Whites and found two dead fish tied to the grass in the middle of the river. Both fish were over 5 lbs.

Here are the pics:

 

On the Other Hand

Some folks naturally got their blood up, then a moderator jumped in with this:

My point was the first thing posters jumped on here was that it must have been someone in a tournament who was cheating. When I first saw the pics, a number of other ideas popped into my had as to reasonings for these two occurrences…. The most obvious to me was as I mentioned with the barrels [to hold fish before eating], it’s common with waterfront homeowners and…looks like one broke loose and floated away.

As for the two 5-pounders, it’s very common for shore anglers, as well as small boaters who don’t have livewells, to catch fish and string em up, tie em to a rock, tree or gunwale cleat with a stringer. Two 5-pound bass, could easily pull that stringer loose and swim away, only to die while still attached to the stringer and eventually float up.

To me, this is not necessarily “shady” or tournament related. Both Widows and Whites, by the way, are not the kind of places that a guy who might be setting up any plan to cheat would use. The numbers of anglers going in and out of these two areas, is certainly very high and not likely to be inconspicuous at all.

In this day and age of high-dollar fishing competitions…we’re sometimes quick to draw conclusions and relate these kinds of things to tournament fishing as a first thought. I’m just trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the tournament guys and say, Hey, there are other logical reasons behind the…pics that were posted.

On the Third Hand

A guy posted this doozy in the same thread:

I fished a 2-day tournament last year in the Delta and personally witnessed a team after day 1 weigh-in throw the fish back in their livewell. They then took off – I’m assuming [to] “dump them in their spot” – [then] came back to the docks within 5 mins and were out after that.

Didn’t think much of it until the second day and they weighed five fish for within 1/10 of a pound from the previous day and then they did the same thing. They then said that they fished within 5 mins from takeoff.

Not to judge a guy, but fishing a 2-day tournament and seeing this happen makes a guy wonder. Although I didn’t see them dump their fish, there was a release boat present and they avoided it on both days.

Big tournament and I hate to make assumptions, but watching this happen and weighing within 1/10 of a pound and win a boat makes a guy wonder.

Hmm. This is making me think of a column I need to write this week on the current state of cheating (sorta) in bassin’ derbies….