Chase Cominksy and Jacob Runyan are the luckiest fishermen on Lake Erie, taking home trophy after trophy on the competitive fishing circuit in Ohio. When anglers get suspicious of the duo’s wins, the truth spills out along with some walleye guts.Big Time is an Apple Original podcast, produced by Piece of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olive Productions. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.apple.co/BigTimePod
Chapter 1: What is the controversy in the fishing competitions?
If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying. Maybe you've heard that expression a time or two, and it would stand to reason that a good time to try that concept out would be in a fishing competition. I mean, after all, who's going to get hurt too bad by a little cheating? It turns out a whole town could get hurt.
And that's why when a dynamic duo and a fishing event in Ohio pursue victory by any means necessary, it becomes just as necessary for tournament organizers to bring down the hammer. I'm Steve Buscemi, and you're listening to Big Time, an Apple original podcast from Peace of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olive Productions.
Today, to tell us a tale of a truly epic and public fail, we have our own dynamic duo, journalists, married couple, and honest anglers, Sean Flynn and Louise Jarvis Flynn, with part one of our story, Dead Fish Tell No Tales.
Every small town that wants to be a bigger town has to come up with something special, claim to fame, has to be hyper-local and plentiful, which means it may be a little odd.
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.
Walleye fishing is a big deal in all of northwest Ohio and southeastern Michigan, and we're right there on the front lines of it. My name is Neil McKinnon III, and I'm the mayor of the great city of Rossford, Ohio.
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.
I've been here my entire life, and when you love a city like I love this city, it's not enough to just be here. I want to be able to give back.
By that, he means transforming Rossford, population 6,300, into a major destination. Here's what he has to work with. Five square miles on the edge of Toledo, a handful of budget hotels next to the Turnpike, an Amazon distribution center, and a Bass Pro Shop. Oh, and there's one more thing. A river runs through it.
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Chapter 2: How did Rossford, Ohio become a fishing hotspot?
This is Mike Miller. He's been fishing tournaments since 2005, though he took a few years off to get his deck building business established. He's been suspicious of Chase and Jake from the very beginning, especially Chase.
all right, hold on a minute. Nobody's even seeing where this guy's fishing, okay? Other teams would talk about it. They were never seeing him on the water during tournament day or in practice. So it was like, how is he doing this?
When Mike and others are wondering, out loud, how Chase and Jake are winning, what they're really asking is, how are they cheating?
you know, people were definitely starting to take sides. And I would actually get into arguments with people like, how do you not understand what he's doing? Are you that blind? How can you just look past it? Like, it's black and white. It's right here. Just look. All you have to do is open your eyes and look. And I was like, all right.
It wasn't ever ruining friendships with anybody, but people around the fishing community knew that I was on his ass, so to speak.
Summer turned to fall, and the walleye were surely getting tired. It's the end of September, and boats are gathered in Cleveland for the Walleye Trail Championship. That's Jason Fisher's big tournament. The event is also a fundraiser for a little boy with cancer. Giving back is not unusual in this community. Free rods for kids, a little swag to get the next generation excited, that sort of thing.
It was a beautiful day, sunshine, everybody was in great spirits.
At the end of the weekend, Team of the Year will be crowned. Chase and Jake are top contenders. Here's Jason Fisher.
They were fixing to win their fourth straight event, which is not probable, and I don't think it's possible.
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