Sports has been a huge part of my life, especially when it comes to baseball and football. I’ve always taken pride in the fact that I never used any form of performance-enhancing drugs to play at a high level. In my mind, this would be a form of cheating, and I made a conscious choice to never be a part of that culture of athletes. 

I saw first-hand how some athletes abused and became victims of decisions and choices they made. It was a huge eye-opening experience my first spring training with the Montreal Expos organization as I saw how many players were using enhancers to perform at a high level. 

I saw the organization basically turn a blind eye to what players were doing to become  better. Oh, it was no secret, and most players did not try and hide what they were using as it was on full display in their lockers. It was just another form of cheating!

Cheating has now become rampant in the tournament bass fishing world. It seems that in every tournament, someone breaks a rule, fails a polygraph test and gets disqualified. 

In the past three years, it has gotten worse — from professional anglers getting caught to amateur anglers trying to win specialty events like big bass tournaments. What happened to the days of anglers going out and fishing with honesty and following the rules?

Why has there been such a surge in anglers’ cheating? The first answer is probably the amount of money tournaments are putting up. Even the lower levels of MLF (Major League Fishing) and the B.A.S.S. organizations have anglers fishing for hundreds of thousands of dollars and opportunities to advance up the ladder of professional bass fishing. 

Even big bass events have anglers fishing for over $100,000 for catching one fish! Like anything else, when there’s a lot of money on the line, it seems to bring out the worst in people. Just like in any form of criminal activity, just follow the money. 

Some anglers will say that there are just too many rules. We all know that the more rules you have in any sport, the more that must be enforced. This makes a bass tournament director’s job even more difficult.

So how do we hit the reset button and get anglers to find their moral compass and follow the rules? I’m not sure we can put the genie back into the bottle, as our society in general has so many people with no morals who will do whatever they can in order to win or get ahead in life.  

I think the first course of action must be making the punishment fit the crime. Organizations must come down harder on these individuals who think it’s OK to cheat! Guidelines need to be established for the severity of the rule or rules that have been violated. 

We aren’t looking for anyone to go before the firing squad, but suspending anglers for the entire season would be a great start. The harder you come down on these anglers, the more they will think twice about cheating. 

Maybe we need to go the legal route, as cheating in a bass tournament is considered fraud. By making a few examples with prosecution, it will probably make others think twice about bending the rules.

These are sad times we live in and it’s a shame we have so many anglers that think it’s OK to cheat. This is one of many reasons why tournament participation is down nationwide. But with more severe punishment, maybe we can reset the course of tournament bass fishing.

In the summer of 2021, a new neighbor moved into what had been a peaceful mobile home park in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, a suburb just north of Minneapolis.  Until then, the residents of the mobile home park held regular barbecues and other outdoor gatherings when the cold Minnesota weather allowed.  Their kids played outside and walked to and from the bus stop without the slightest hint of hesitation.  The trailer park residents got along well with each other.  That all changed when the new neighbor moved in.         

The new neighbor was a bully who victimized the residents of the mobile home park.  The bully chased them, taunted them, and sometimes attacked them.  The residents were unable to relax even when they were inside their own homes because the bully peaked through their windows and made sounds that they said became terrifying to them.  One day, 41-year-old Rachael Gross was carrying her groceries from her car to her home when the bully dropped down from her roof and knocked her to the ground.  During the struggle that followed, the bully ripped her jacket before Rachael was able to escape into her house.  Her groceries lay scattered on her front lawn.  The bully even followed Rachael to the nearby nursing home where she worked and to her favorite local restaurant.  Each time, Rachael rushed inside to safety.  The bully always stopped just shy of following her in.  During another attack, Rachael slung water from her water bottle onto the bully.  The shock from the water gave her just enough time to get inside before the bully ran back toward her.  After numerous attacks, Rachael and her neighbors began to carry sticks, brooms, golf clubs, and baseball bats anytime they went outside.  Rachael and her neighbors called the authorities on several occasions, but the bully continued to terrorize the neighborhood.  Because Rachael was most often the target of the bully, her neighbors began to suspect that she was somehow helping him despite her emphatic denials.      

Rachael felt trapped.  She said, “I’m pretty stressed out and pretty anxious all the time.  I can’t even have peace.  I’m so exhausted.  I hope this gets a solution and somebody comes to help so I don’t have to deal with this anymore, and so that we can all have a peaceful summer with our kids and our grandkids and actually have a barbecue and just relax.”   Summer turned into fall and there was no relief from the bully.  Parents had to walk their kids to and from the bust stop armed with a variety of weapons.  The kids used their backpacks as shields.  The neighborhood cancelled all of their usual outside activities including trick-or-treating at Halloween.  For two years, the residents of the trailer park lived in fear of the bully.  In the fall of 2023, reports of the bullying ended.  Rumors persist that someone in the mobile home park murdered the bully.  Perhaps they were all involved in the murder conspiracy.  Some of the rumors go as far as to say that there is no evidence to be found because the residents ate the bully during a Thanksgiving celebration.  The new neighbor which plagued that mobile home park was a wild turkey.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Sources:

1.     Kirsten Mitchell, “‘This turkey has literally taken over our life’: Wild turkey terrorizing neighbors in Coon Rapids,” CBS News, January 21, 2023, accessed November 16, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/wild-turkey-terrorizing-neighbors-in-coon-rapids/.

2.     The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), March 5, 2023, p.5M.