Mayor Neal

Not in Rossford, for sure. You know, that kind of just knocked us all down.

We decided to pause. We just thought that we need to get better.

We want credibility, whatever that looks like. You know, so if we need to put more things in place, then we'll do that.

I just thought it was genius and brilliant that being the only municipality in all of Northwest Ohio that has a Bass Pro, being on the Maumee River, which is the largest walleye run in the entire country, being eight miles from Lake Erie, which is the walleye capital of the world, that we had finally found a niche. We had found something that separated us from everybody else.

Our dream was, and it still is, and we're going to go after it, is to make this the largest and best and most popular and famous walleye fishing tournament on planet Earth.

It just, this will sound bad, it wasn't a priority for me. I was already looking towards next year's tournament, how to make that bigger and better and to promote our city. My son's a big barstool sports guy. And he goes, Dad, you're national. Like, what are you talking about? You're on barstool sports. I go, I haven't played high school football since 1986.

And he goes, no, those guys in Cleveland, the cheating and all that stuff. And then I just, I watched the circus. I saw the YouTube videos and everything else.

You got to remember, everybody shows up with a baseball hat, bib overalls, dark sunglasses, and they're holding up fish.

I was bothered and hurt by what I thought would be the assault on the integrity of our walleye tournament. Then we really started from scratch. It hit me like a ton of bricks, because at the time, I thought it was so bizarre they wouldn't donate their fish. And then fast forward to that, when they got caught, I'm like, I know why they didn't donate their fish.