> Game wardens investigating possible bass fishing tournament fraud in Travis and Bastrop counties discovered a unique sleight of hand while checking the potential violator after he had submitted questionable photos to a tournament on Decker Lake.

> The catch and release kayak fishing event used photos taken by contestants out on the water of their catches placed on a measuring board, with the angler having the most inches of bass in the aggregate declared the winner.

> Upon inspection of the violator’s vessel, a cut tail of a bass was found in the paddle well of the kayak. The violator initially stated he found the cut tail in the reeds and was taking it to shore to turn it in. Later the violator confirmed to have used the tail to place over another bass, using his hand to cover the questionable area, to make the fish look longer on multiple occasions.

> The violator was arrested for fraud in a fishing tournament. The charges are pending.

> Danny Ray’s grand jury testimony [about cheating in bass tourneys] was set for Wednesday, Aug 29, 1984. On Tuesday, a neighbor found him on the banks of a gravel pit lake near his family home, a shotgun blast blown right through his head.

> Neither of the men were entered in the tournament. But they had a serious rooting interest in someone who was. Terry Isam, from Longview, TX, was an acquaintance of McNeil’s, and Isam had agreed to split whatever money he won in the event with him. All McNeil had to do was give Isam this enormous black bass that he and Scheen had bought in South Florida. The only problem was, the thing was frozen solid. So they stopped off at McNeil’s house to try to thaw the thing out in his bathtub before they got back on the road.

> By far, the most common way people cheat is to store a fish basket or pet taxi under a dock, filled with lunkers they’d caught before the event, and then retrieve the fish while they were supposed to be out fishing.

> A variation on this would be to attach a string to a stump in the water and hook various fish to the string. This way allows fishermen to retrieve the fish while faking that they actually caught them, just in case they were paired up in the boat with a competitor.

> There was the story that Ray Scott told me about a man who showed up for a tournament wearing a full-length raincoat even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky — his partner later discovered the man had a string of bass draped around his neck.

> There was the guy in the U.K. who…won a [saltwater] bass fishing tournament…only to have the 2nd-place finisher recognize the giant bass from a recent trip he had taken to the local aquarium with his daughter. They called the aquarium and, sure enough, it was missing a big bass.

> Ray Scott: “My primary motivation in 1967 was because I had seen cheating, or a very easy opportunity to cheat, in these events where you win a shotgun or a fishing pole or whatever. These guys didn’t care about the shotguns or the fishing poles or anything else. He’ll do anything to shine. I accept that. That’s a natural motivation. That’s why I wrote rules to take care of that guy.”

> It’s only the 3rd record largemouth bass in WY history and could easily be the last.

> This 11.51-lb fish caught May 10 at Kleenburn Ponds just north of Sheridan didn’t just shatter the old record from March 1992 by nearly 4 pounds — it has astounded fish biologists and bested the state record of not just all surrounding states, but several Midwest states too.

> …Caleb Salzman…The Sheridan College freshman landed “8 to 9 little bass” before hooking the record on a green plastic worm. [Gonna go with green pumpkin.]

> Although the record will always legally be listed at 11.51 lbs, the documents could have read 12 lbs or even a little more had the fish been officially weighed the evening it was caught. Salzman said the bass weighed “12 and a half pounds” on a “cheap” tacklebox scale that night.

> “Catching a largemouth bass of this size is really similar is to shooting a 400″ bull elk in a general license public land area,” said Paul Mavrakis, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s fisheries supervisor in Sheridan. “It’s an incredible accomplishment.”