[Cleveland.com] CLEVELAND, Ohio - Jacob Runyan of Cleveland and his tournament fishing partner, Chase Cominsky of Hermitage, Pa., had seemed to be the best walleye anglers to ever probe the big waters of Lake Erie for money-winning trophy walleye the last couple of years. That all stopped on Saturday afternoon when the pair weighed a limit of five walleye on a tournament stage perched in the parking lot of Gordon Park in the Cleveland Metroparks.An elite field of 30 two-angler teams were competing on a windy day in the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship in Cleveland Harbor.
The string of walleye competition successes for Runyan and Cominsky were legendary, but this time Tournament Director Jason Fischer wanted to put his hands on the dead walleye in their weigh-in bag.
"I knew right away that something was very wrong with those walleye," said Fischer in a telephone interview.
One of the other tournament regulars said he’d been told by Runyan that the other competitors might as well go home, because Runyan and Cominsky could not be beat.
"When I felt something hard in the belly of their first fish, and their limit of five walleye seemed excessively heavy, at more than 33 pounds, for their length, I called for a fillet knife," said Fischer, who also works as law enforcement officer in the Cleveland area.
The first slice opened the body cavity, and with almost no prodding, Fisher’s video showed one of the big sinkers falling from the walleye’s body cavity.
"We’ve got weights in the fish!" Fischer announced to the crowd around the weigh-in stage, many with cell phone video cameras. A total of about 10 sinkers were ultimately removed from the five walleye.
No trophy or prize, just a real good time on the barge, fishing for Walleye on the Mississippi.