Narrator 2
Appearances
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
And would it ever run out? Not anytime soon, Chase and Jake left Rossford with a check for $10,000. And this is a twist. They're fish. This detail is important. At most tournaments, everyone donates their fish to a local soup kitchen or food pantry. No one wants good walleye to go to waste. The Rossford Roundup donated fish to Toledo's Helping Hands of St. Louis.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
Definitely weird. But there was another weird thing, too. On the first day of the roundup, after their boat was inspected and their fish were counted in the live well, Chase and Jake took a wrong turn on their way in.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
Mayor Neil means great city in the sense that Rossford is awesome, because it's not great like, say, the Great Pyramids. It's neither big nor famous.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
They drove to their hotel, where Chase unloaded a black bag from the front of his boat. And in that bag were three walleye.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
One, I've stayed at that hotel. There are no cooking facilities, nothing with which one could properly prepare a fish. Two, smuggling three extra fish under your boat is wildly against the rules.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
And scene. Chase and Jake having those extra walleye, and then Chase and Jake winning? Not a good look. So a few days after the roundup, someone gave that dash cam video to the tournament director, who gave it to Mayor Neal, who gave it to Police Chief Todd.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
At first blush, that might seem a bit overzealous, police investigating a fishing rules violation. But take a step back. Teams pay $500 a boat to enter. Corporations put their brands and their goods and their money behind it. Thousands of dollars are on the line.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
It was thoroughly investigated. But violating a tournament rule is not the same as breaking the law. And no one had any evidence of that. Water under the bridge, so to speak.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
That's a lot of pressure for the little city of Rossford.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
When Mike and others are wondering, out loud, how Chase and Jake are winning, what they're really asking is, how are they cheating?
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
Actually, Chase and Jake don't need to win this tournament to be named Team of the Year. That's based on points. And they'd accumulated so many over the course of the season that even with a middling catch this weekend, they're shoo-ins.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
If Chase and Jake finished in 11th place, 11th, They would be team of the year. Fishing wasn't great that weekend. By day two of the tournament, they only needed five fish weighing a total of 17 pounds max, a scooch over three pounds per fish.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
Well, next to it. Rossford is on the east bank of the Maumee River, a mere eight miles upstream from Lake Erie. And you know what's in Lake Erie? Walleye.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
He left Jake holding the bag, literally a bag of walleye.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
They're fantastic eating. White, flaky, not too many bones. Good to fry, grill, bake, whatever.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
And those fish were going to make Rossford famous. In 2017, the city hosted the first ever Rossford Walleye Roundup. Competitive fishing. For money. That was Rossford's ticket to greatness.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
And you can win a lot, thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands, maybe even a new boat. Most tournaments last two days, but the big granddaddy at the end of the season, the walleye fall brawl, goes on for weeks and pays out more than $100,000 to first place. Rossford, in 2017, couldn't afford anything like that. It was a small tournament, brand new, but a city can dream.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
Mayor Neal says that a lot. The biggest tournament on planet Earth.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
We're in the back room of a bar called Moe's Place on Rossford's very short main drag.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
Bass Pro Shops was the main sponsor. There were 13 two-person teams for the first Rossford Walleye Roundup, each of which paid a $500 entry fee. After two days of fishing, the winner was a father-and-son team from Michigan. They took home $3,500, new rods and reels, and free lodging and entry for next year's roundup.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
And it kept growing year after year. The 2020 roundup was canceled because of COVID, but the next year, 2021, was a monster comeback. Almost 50 teams and a total payout of $30,000.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
By 2022, Rossford was attracting some of the best walleye fishers around. There were two guys, in fact, that everyone in walleye world was talking about. Two guys who'd been on the most remarkable tear of anybody in... Well, walleye history.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
Jason's a good guy, well-liked. You can see it in the way the other anglers interact with him. And he knows as much about walleye and what it takes to catch them as anyone competing.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
There's definitely a level of skill separating your typical weekend caster from serious walleye competitors. But it also means that at these walleye tournaments, all the regulars are experts. So the difference between first and second place, or first and fifth, comes down to ounces. So there's skill involved, definitely. But there's also luck.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
By the end of 2021, Chase and Jake seemed to be having a lot of fun, catching fish and cashing checks. They were killing it. Maybe a little too hard. People noticed. People talked.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
But there was something Mayor Neal did not know. Chase and Jake were actually disqualified from one of those big tournaments they initially won. It was the Fall Brawl, the Big Granddaddy with the $100,000 prize.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
Did they withdraw? Was there some kind of unfortunate technicality? A rules violation, perhaps? It was all very... fishy.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
For example, Banner Elk, North Carolina, population 1,350, has a lot of woolly worms and a woolly worm festival that draws 20,000 people every year. The good people of Clinton, Montana, all 811 of them, got 10,000 visitors every summer to eat deep-fried bull testicles.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
He's also checking to make sure that there aren't more than five fish on the boat. You can't catch, say, eight big fish and save three of them for the second day of competition. You've got to start fresh. After the inspection, the fishermen drive their catch back to Bass Pro Shop in Rossford to be weighed. Now, in most tournaments, there's no driving at all.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
The fish are weighed right there, near the boat launch. But the roundup is launching their boats from Cullen Park. That's 20 minutes up the highway.
Big Time
Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2
Oh, yeah. A live fish you almost certainly caught that day during the tournament. A dead one? That could be some monster you caught two days ago and kept on ice.
Crook County
1 | Give Me Your F**kin Money
Chicago is something you've just got to see for yourself.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 2 - Jane Doe
Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.