Jason Fisher

Whew!

They were fixing to win their fourth straight event, which is not probable, and I don't think it's possible.

I had literally done the math. This team needs to beat this team by five places in order to win Team of the Year. And, you know, I think there was seven that were relatively in contention to win. So I had those nailed down.

When they were coming up to the scales, I saw their fish, and I knew that they had to be in 11th place, either here or there. I'm looking at them, put the fish in the basket, and I'm like, okay, four-pounder, four-pounder, four-pounder. I'm like, all right, 20 pounds. I said, they probably got it.

Well, when they put the first fish on the scale, the big fish, in my gut, there's no way. There is no way that's an eight-pound fish.

And then when they put the other fish, so five total on the scale, and it was like 33 and some change.

You need almost a seven pound average. They just didn't have seven pound fish. So I said, I want to take a look at them.

It's just like the fear in their face, you know what I'm saying? Like I could tell he was like, oh, I'm in trouble. It's about to hit the fan. I felt a hard object in the belly of the fish. I'm like, oh my God. There's typically not hard objects in the belly of a fish.

All right, in first place, in the open division, and currently leading the walleye slam and the fall ball, Chase Kaminsky, Jacob Rodion, your champions.

Congratulations, guys. You guys earned it.

I always joke we're all too old and fat to play baseball, so here we are, we fish. We show up, and whose equipment's the best? You got flashy boats, flashy trucks, stickers all over your gear, and you go out and just kind of stack it up at the end of the day. And when it's all said and done, you know, these guys are buddies. They're just normal Joes. They all have jobs.

Nobody does this for a living.

They can be tricky, especially inland lakes. But here on Lake Erie, it's the most plentiful fish out there. There's a lot of different ways to catch them. And you can have a lot of success here on Lake Erie. And some people would think walleye fishing is easy, but that's because they do it here. Go everywhere else in the world. You know, they are a difficult, they're a very finicky fish.

If you look out at that lake right there, you can't see any walleyes. So, you know, you got to find them and then you have to catch them. So it's a difficult thing to do. And it's difficult to always be the top dog, the number one guy. And then you factor in all the actual competition. Everybody else is doing the same thing. You know, it's a very difficult thing to do.

Guys will get a win, maybe two. They'll finish top fives. But it's tough to win event after event after event.

You know, you're just out here just trying to fuel your spirit. Keep it going. You know, it's just what that's what we do. And that's all these guys are. They're just little kids and grownups bodies out here having fun.

If you look at it as a restaurant where there was like six months probation and then, you know, a couple months in jail. And he kept going back to jail. The same crime in the same way. And that's its own kind of sickness. It's not like he went back to the streets drug dealing in this game or something and figured out a new way and avoided the cops. No. It's like he wanted to get caught.

It was hard to watch, and I was probably the only one who had a hard time watching.

Club promoter Steve Lewis again.

Stephen Lewis, when he ripped Andrew in that article, I said, fuck, I know a different Andrew, and I know that Andrew he's talking about, and I know exactly why he thinks he's that guy. Andrew's old schoolmate, Jason Ressler, again. I was always his friend. I've never abandoned a friend in my life who didn't really deserve it. Andrew never broke what we were at 11 or 12 years old.

There's never been a time I couldn't call Andrew and he wouldn't drop things. He had a lot of selfish aspects. And I don't think there's anybody who's going to talk as sweetly about Andrew as I will. Whatever bad stuff they say to that, I can't say they're wrong.

He had destroyed everybody. And I think now he was doing business in Miami for years now. And it seems to me, last I heard, he was like, you know, being real legit, you know?

I don't actually have 11 years old. We went to the Timothy Dwight schools.

It's definitely stood for that. And it was definitely quite accurate. It was a school for like that screw up level or that not intellectual level or that kind of reject level. It was sort of like just a step down from the Horace Mans and all the kind of very elite private schools. And if you sort of couldn't get into there or got kicked out of there, you went to Dwight.

Andrew was quite aspirational, let's say. I would say he's in that middle-class part that got rich for a time and then lost it. This like up and down kind of gambler's father, Wall Street version of gambler's personality. I definitely think that made an impact on his mind.

We had a dress code where we had to wear a tie and jacket to school. And Andrew, he wore a three-piece suit to school. He was wearing Scarface, the book, like at age, you know, 12 or whatever the hell it came out.

And he was already big in the scene. He'd already been to Aria. He'd already been to Danceteria. He had known everybody every place. Andrew knew everybody by that point.

We were all VIP at 15, 16. We all knew each other. And it wasn't just us. It was big stars. I mean, it wasn't like today. People weren't worried about their phones. So it was a really like anything goes, anything decadent. You know, people could do cocaine on a table.

If he was with three people or four people, he got picked and the other three didn't, he'd go inside a club, right? I mean, that was his thing. And I said to him when he started taking me out, and I'm like, don't ever pull that shit. I mean, he never did.

Andrew and I opened an illegal after-hours club at 17 years old, and everybody came to it. We were terrible businessmen. We opened a club called Pacha. It was so crazy, because we actually had super fancy stationery, because his mom did stationery, so it was the nicest invitation to work. And then I remember getting in a fight with my father.

He's a criminal lawyer, and he's realizing I'm running an illegal nightclub at 17. What the fuck? Andrew was born to be corrupt, but it was New York.

When you go to like a rich school and you just think everything's sort of normal and you have all this thing, you're sort of very free, and now suddenly you see the social differences.

He built himself up from the streets to multiple street vendors. He was a good hustler. He was always a good hustler.

Eventually had this quite prominent store in Madison Avenue where he was catering to Who Who and De Niro and all the big stars like Doc Severinsen and, you know, just Johnny Carson. Like big people came to that store.

He never got past the point of being kind of a street salesman because maybe he was like that his whole life. And that's when the problems started happening.

I'm like, oh, my God. There's typically not hard objects in the belly of a fish. I mean, they're not eating, you know, zebra mussels or, you know, rocks or whatever, turtles.

First of all, I wanted to thank you and the prosecution and the Division of Wildlife for handling this matter seriously. It means a lot to us, and not that you wouldn't, but at the end of the day, it is a complaint generated by fishing. So we appreciate you guys taking the time to investigate properly.