HOBBY: Fishing and cheating – caught with a lead hand!

I just read an article about a man who was disqualified from a fishing tournament for cheating. Y’all, I think Jesus is coming soon.

Fishing is a sport long known for its liars. Have you ever heard the term “fish story”? But when people start cheating at fishing tournaments, well, that means this world has gotten so bad that only Jesus can fix it – and don’t forget, his disciples were fishermen.

Look, I don’t fish much – I just don’t have the patience – but this story piqued my interest. So I searched the Internet and, to my great surprise, I discovered that cheating does indeed exist in fishing competitions. In fact, many of them require the winner to take a lie detector test before awarding the prize money.

I guess it’s like anything else; When it comes to big money, the wrong people are attracted to it – just like politics. In fact, maybe we should require our elected officials to take regular polygraph tests.

On the other hand, lie detectors probably wouldn’t work on politicians. Most of these clowns have lied so much that they think they are telling the truth.

There are several ways to cheat at fishing. One of the most common scams involves adding weight to your catch via lead fishing weights or ball bearings. Another more complicated method is to have a hidden well in the boat that is loaded with fish that they will add to the total catch that the competitors will bring in during the tournament. Either way, it’s despicable.

Look, I’m not naive. Cheating exists in other sports. Anyone who has played in a golf tournament is familiar with “sandbaggers,” a term given to players who claim they are worse than themselves at getting extra shots or stealing with inferior players. Golfers joke about it, but it’s still cheating.

However, in my mind, there is something particularly wrong about adding weight to a fish in order to make money. It’s sneaky, it’s planned in advance and it seems worse to me.

I’m not the only one. An Ohio court sentenced two men to 10 days in jail for cheating in a fishing tournament. They were stopped when one of the competition officials thought one of their fish was too heavy for its length.

So they opened it and found it was filled with lead weights and fish fillets to weigh it down. These guys, who had pocketed more than $100,000 in prize money in other fishing tournaments, had put 8 pounds of illegal weight in their catch. They were caught with lead hands.

I wonder: at that point, did these guys decide to confess everything, or did they try to make up a lame lie?

“Well, what do you know!” I didn’t know fish ate that kind of thing. Talk about a bottom feeder.

Once in court, the judge lowered the barrier. In addition to the prison sentence, he decreed that the men would lose a very expensive fishing boat. They also lost their fishing license for three years, paid a fine and donated to a fishing charity. Looks like Your Honor is the guy who finished in second place.

The only thing he didn’t do was give them 200 hours of community service at a Captain D. And I would have been OK with that.

And what will these guys say when the other inmates ask them what crime they committed to send them to the cell?

“Um, well, I cheated in a fishing tournament.”

It won’t impress anyone at the club. It might even get you beaten up. If it were me, I’d look them straight in the eye and say, “I got arrested for filling a fish full of lead.” » This may look like pulling someone to leave you alone.

Otherwise, I would just tell them that I am a politician.

Joe Hobby is a comedian from Alabama who wrote for Jay Leno for many years.