Some tournament anglers thought winning would be like shooting fish in a barrel. They thought wrong!
When there's money on the line, tournament anglers will go to great lengths to win it, and some of them will even cheat. However, on many occasions, cheaters get caught and pay the price. It's a growing trend of dishonorable conduct among competitors. Rest assured, if you cheat and get caught, nobody is going to cover your tracks.
This Facebook video shows a 55-gallon drum with holes drilled in it that had been sunken in the back of a slough on Barkley Lake in Kentucky. Someone filled the drum with several largemouth bass, all with culling buoys attached and a trap door to place and remove fish.
As professional bass angler Toby Lillard said when sharing this post from his Facebook page:
"If you need to cheat, you need to quit!"
The person in the video is removing fish from the barrel and releasing them individually. But, the best course of action should you encounter something like this is to mark the coordinates and report it.
Cheating in a bass tournament carries some pretty heavy penalties in most states. But you have to catch the anglers to prosecute them. Leaving the contraption where it is and notifying law enforcement will allow for an opportunity to set up a sting operation to catch the cheating anglers in the act.
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