8 ms·

Competitive Bass Fishing Cheaters (2014)

67 points by EndXA 3y ago

debacle 3y ago
The lesson here is that, even when the stakes are small, human beings are still human beings, with all that that entails.
- lisper 3y ago
  I was recently on a cruise. There was a daily trivia game on days when we were at sea. It got quite cutthroat, to the point where some passengers had to be reprimanded for abusing the crew. I was so appalled I stopped participating. The prize we were competing for was a baseball cap.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    It's crazy to me how competitive some people get, and how they justify their behavior to themselves. There is a parent of a kid in a group with my kids, and they started shouting obscenities at a judge who they disagreed with. I can't imagine behaving that way at all, let alone in front of my children. I don't know how they can expect their
    - michaelcampbell 3y ago
      > I can't imagine behaving that way at all, let alone in front of my children. I don't know how they can expect their Uhoh, they've said too much...
      - freedomben 3y ago
        Ha! :-D Too late to edit now, but I decided against writing that last sentence but apparently I failed at deleting it. I was thinking to say "I don't know how they can expect their children to act decently when they model such indecent behavior" but it felt a little too harsh.
        michaelcampbell 3y ago
        Could be harsh to some, but I'm right there with you. I can't express the shame and guilt when my first "naughty word" came out in front of my son.
  - extraduder_ire 3y ago
    I think this phenomenon is known as "the lesser the juice, the tighter the squeeze". It's also what makes listing something as free-to-take on something like craigslist more of a headache than putting a small price on it.
    - michaelcampbell 3y ago
      This works in reverse, too; want to give something away? Put it on the street with a "Free" sign, and watch it sit for days. Instead, put a "$25" sign on it and its gone within the hour.
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
        Bah. Why didn’t I think of this. Last time I moved, I was upset nobody wanted to take my table+chairs set. Would gladly have given someone a chance to “steal” them. They even would have a story to tell.
  - wredue 3y ago
    My neighbourhood used to put on an Easter egg hunt for the kids. Parents donate a bunch of chocolate eggs and other volunteers spread them around a large park. Unfortunately this event had to be cancelled because some parent were running around with their kids in their arms to pick up the most eggs, others were shoving 4 year old kids, other yet were watching 3 year olds waddle in their oversized snow suit to an egg excitedly, but would run up and take the egg. I never imagined that it would go that badly. Mind you, we did attempt several years with different rules and communications that parents aren’t to be involved and it didn’t help.
- tombert 3y ago
  This is why I refuse to play Overcooked or Overcooked 2 ever again. Every time I've played, it ends with me being yelled at because I'm not very good at it, and getting blamed for getting a one star. At one point when a friend suggested it, I passed and said "look dude, I can get paid for someone yelling at me, and have just as much fun." It's a stupid video game, zero stakes, but those games in particular seem to just turn people into assholes.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    I hate that you had a bad experience with it. I love that game. Laughing at each others blunders is what makes it entertaining.
  - HanClinto 3y ago
    haha, yeah. It's so weird -- I first played this in the context of coworkers during a week-long hackathon event, and we played Overcooked to blow off steam. It was a ton of fun. Later, I was looking for good multiplayer games to play as a family, and with those fond memories I picked up Overcooked for the Switch. Boy, was that a mistake. My kids normally get along fine, but this brought out every bad tendency they had for bad cooperation and blame. Never again. The kids still vividly remember that and refuse to play that one together ever again.
    - michaelcampbell 3y ago
      This is kind of why I dislike coop games. In competitive games, if I suck, fine, I suck and I get the low score or do badly. In coop, if I suck (and let me assure that in general, I do), I've let down the team and I get the stinkeye at best.
      - tombert 3y ago
        My wife and I played through It Takes Two a couple years ago, and we actually really liked it. The game is actually mandatory coop (there's no single player option), but it's low-stakes. It was fun playing through all the puzzles with her, so much so that we actually played through it again.
hluska 3y ago
There was a recent case involving cheating at a walleye fishing tournament: https://www.outdoorlife.com/fishing/walleye-anglers-sentenced-jail-time/ https://www.outdoorlife.com/fishing/walleye-anglers-sentence...
martinky24 3y ago
Really miss Grantland, that was some of my favorite content on the internet at the time. Shame it got shut down the way it did. Haven't found something that replaces the exact itch it scratched for me at the time. Some good Substacks are the closest.
- parpfish 3y ago
  longform stuff on defector (the writer-owned site built from the ashes of deadspin) hits a lot of the same notes for me
sharpshadow 3y ago
So how does the cheat work?
- qup 3y ago
  > Whenever I told friends of mine I was working on a story about cheating at bass fishing, they always asked the same thing: How in the world do you cheat at bass fishing? Let me count the ways, I’d tell them. > By far, the most common way people cheat is to store a fish basket or pet taxi under a dock, filled with lunkers they’d caught before the event, and then retrieve the fish while they were supposed to be out fishing. A variation on this would be to attach a string to a stump in the water and hook various fish to the string. This way allows fishermen to retrieve the fish while faking that they actually caught them, just in case they were paired up in the boat with a competitor. There was the story that Ray Scott told me about a man who showed up for a tournament wearing a full-length raincoat even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky — his partner later discovered the man had a string of bass draped around his neck. There was the guy in the U.K. who last year won a bass fishing tournament with a 13-pounder, only to have the second-place finisher recognize the giant bass from a recent trip he had taken to the local aquarium with his daughter. They called the aquarium and, sure enough, it was missing a big bass. People have been caught buying fish off of noncompetitors on the lake during an event, or sharing fish between colluding teams.
  - kristjansson 3y ago
    > his partner later discovered the man had a string of bass draped around his neck Incredible. I guess you have to hope the other person catches early so they don’t notice the smell!
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    There was a video[1] going around about a year ago of some guys who cheated in a fishing tournament by stuffing weights inside their fish. Wild what people are willing to do! 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga3Rj9oaMWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga3Rj9oaMWA
  - acangiano 3y ago
causality0 3y ago
You don’t just pull the fish in with all your might. That’s a sure way to break your line and let the fish escape. How much stronger would fishing line have to be before you could brute force 95% of fish in?
- slcjordan 3y ago
  They definitely make line that is strong enough but it's thicker and fish that spot it are hesitant to take the bait. So there's a balance: strong enough not to lose fish but thin enough to gain an edge over the other competitors.
  - Y_Y 3y ago
    I was thinking about designing a line that thickened and strengthened in response to the tension of reeling, but that I realized a negative poisson ratio was the opposite of what I wanted.
    - pontifk8r 3y ago
      How many kids do you have, dad engineer?
- munificent 3y ago
  This is a complicated question. In general, yes, you can absolutely put strong enough line on that will let you haul a fish straight out of the water dangling from it. It you fish for small fish (perch, bluegill, etc.), that's basically what you do every time. They are small enough that even the lightest line will still hold them. The challenge, though, is that the stronger the line is, the more visible it is to the fish, and the less finesse you have when fishing with it. More visible line can spook fish and get you fewer bites. And a thicker, stiffer line can make it harder for you to work the lure in a realistic way that entices fish to bite. So you're always making the trade-off where lighter line means more bites but a greater risk of not landing the fish if it breaks the line. Stronger lines mean fewer bites but if you get a hookset, you can probably land the fish. There are other complications too: fish aren't the only thing in the water. Stronger line can help you not lose lures if it gets tangled on branches or other obstructions. On the other hand, lighter line is more fun to fish with. You feel what the fish is doing much more clearly and the fight is more interactive. Catching a small fish using a big stiff fishing rod with heavy line feels like listening to music with earplugs in. You lose a lot of the experience. Also, there are different kinds of line: monofilament, fluorocarbon, braid. And you don't have to use the same kind of line for the whole length. Sometimes it makes sense to have a leader (a short section of line at the end) that's lighter or heavier than your main line. One of the delights of fishing is that it's an endless problem-solving exercise in gear optimization.
gumby 3y ago
I first parsed "competitive bass fishing cheaters" as cheaters who competed with each other for the best technique. Then I realised that was silly -- they are cheating to beat everyone. A classic "garden path" sentence. Then I realised that both interpretations are correct.
- rrr_oh_man 3y ago
  For the other lucky 9,999: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
  - ugh123 3y ago
    Wow thank you. Been looking for a definition of these kinds of sentences for a long time!
    - shagie 3y ago
      https://xkcd.com/2793/ https://xkcd.com/2793/ is the relevant xkcd... and the explain https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2793:_Garden_Path_Sentence https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2793:_Garden_Path...
      - rrr_oh_man 3y ago
        ...And for the "other 9,999" part: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ and https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousand https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousan...
- Y_Y 3y ago
  I misread that as "garden path sentience" and imagined that you were a paved walkway who had gained the power of self-reflection.
dang 3y ago
Discussed (just a bit) at the time: The Weight of Guilt: Competitive bass fishing cheaters - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694091 - Dec 2014 (1 comment)
pluc 3y ago
Aw, one of my first project in web development was a fishing tournament platform so for some odd reason that's dear to my heart (though I care little for the actual thing). Probably the best intro you can have to "never trust user input".
rpmisms 3y ago
Count Dankula (yes, Nazi pug guy) did a good mini-doc on one of the worst offenders. Got me interested, and wow, this goes a lot deeper than I thought. Of course every sport has cheaters, but some don't seem to be as egregious.
- acangiano 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQwtPh4wOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQwtPh4wOA
seabass-labrax 3y ago
SEEKING WORK | Any pleasant body of water | Remote working not possible Experienced seabass seeking freelance position. Open to partners for fishy business at tournaments. Very handsome and sure to impress any tournament judge. (Note: only accepting contracts on a 'paid relocation back to water' basis).
hollywood_court 3y ago
I’m pretty sure there is a Carl Hiaasen novel that deals with this.
nextworddev 3y ago
Had no idea Grantland was still around
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

67 points by EndXA 3y ago

The lesson here is that, even when the stakes are small, human beings are still human beings, with all that that entails.

lisper 3y ago
I was recently on a cruise. There was a daily trivia game on days when we were at sea. It got quite cutthroat, to the point where some passengers had to be reprimanded for abusing the crew. I was so appalled I stopped participating. The prize we were competing for was a baseball cap.
- freedomben 3y ago
  It's crazy to me how competitive some people get, and how they justify their behavior to themselves. There is a parent of a kid in a group with my kids, and they started shouting obscenities at a judge who they disagreed with. I can't imagine behaving that way at all, let alone in front of my children. I don't know how they can expect their
  - michaelcampbell 3y ago
    > I can't imagine behaving that way at all, let alone in front of my children. I don't know how they can expect their Uhoh, they've said too much...
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Ha! :-D Too late to edit now, but I decided against writing that last sentence but apparently I failed at deleting it. I was thinking to say "I don't know how they can expect their children to act decently when they model such indecent behavior" but it felt a little too harsh.
      - michaelcampbell 3y ago
        Could be harsh to some, but I'm right there with you. I can't express the shame and guilt when my first "naughty word" came out in front of my son.
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  I think this phenomenon is known as "the lesser the juice, the tighter the squeeze". It's also what makes listing something as free-to-take on something like craigslist more of a headache than putting a small price on it.
  - michaelcampbell 3y ago
    This works in reverse, too; want to give something away? Put it on the street with a "Free" sign, and watch it sit for days. Instead, put a "$25" sign on it and its gone within the hour.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
      Bah. Why didn’t I think of this. Last time I moved, I was upset nobody wanted to take my table+chairs set. Would gladly have given someone a chance to “steal” them. They even would have a story to tell.
- wredue 3y ago
  My neighbourhood used to put on an Easter egg hunt for the kids. Parents donate a bunch of chocolate eggs and other volunteers spread them around a large park. Unfortunately this event had to be cancelled because some parent were running around with their kids in their arms to pick up the most eggs, others were shoving 4 year old kids, other yet were watching 3 year olds waddle in their oversized snow suit to an egg excitedly, but would run up and take the egg. I never imagined that it would go that badly. Mind you, we did attempt several years with different rules and communications that parents aren’t to be involved and it didn’t help.
tombert 3y ago
This is why I refuse to play Overcooked or Overcooked 2 ever again. Every time I've played, it ends with me being yelled at because I'm not very good at it, and getting blamed for getting a one star. At one point when a friend suggested it, I passed and said "look dude, I can get paid for someone yelling at me, and have just as much fun." It's a stupid video game, zero stakes, but those games in particular seem to just turn people into assholes.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  I hate that you had a bad experience with it. I love that game. Laughing at each others blunders is what makes it entertaining.
- HanClinto 3y ago
  haha, yeah. It's so weird -- I first played this in the context of coworkers during a week-long hackathon event, and we played Overcooked to blow off steam. It was a ton of fun. Later, I was looking for good multiplayer games to play as a family, and with those fond memories I picked up Overcooked for the Switch. Boy, was that a mistake. My kids normally get along fine, but this brought out every bad tendency they had for bad cooperation and blame. Never again. The kids still vividly remember that and refuse to play that one together ever again.
  - michaelcampbell 3y ago
    This is kind of why I dislike coop games. In competitive games, if I suck, fine, I suck and I get the low score or do badly. In coop, if I suck (and let me assure that in general, I do), I've let down the team and I get the stinkeye at best.
    - tombert 3y ago
      My wife and I played through It Takes Two a couple years ago, and we actually really liked it. The game is actually mandatory coop (there's no single player option), but it's low-stakes. It was fun playing through all the puzzles with her, so much so that we actually played through it again.

hluska 3y ago

There was a recent case involving cheating at a walleye fishing tournament: https://www.outdoorlife.com/fishing/walleye-anglers-sentenced-jail-time/ https://www.outdoorlife.com/fishing/walleye-anglers-sentence...

martinky24 3y ago

Really miss Grantland, that was some of my favorite content on the internet at the time. Shame it got shut down the way it did. Haven't found something that replaces the exact itch it scratched for me at the time. Some good Substacks are the closest.

parpfish 3y ago
longform stuff on defector (the writer-owned site built from the ashes of deadspin) hits a lot of the same notes for me

sharpshadow 3y ago

So how does the cheat work?

qup 3y ago
> Whenever I told friends of mine I was working on a story about cheating at bass fishing, they always asked the same thing: How in the world do you cheat at bass fishing? Let me count the ways, I’d tell them. > By far, the most common way people cheat is to store a fish basket or pet taxi under a dock, filled with lunkers they’d caught before the event, and then retrieve the fish while they were supposed to be out fishing. A variation on this would be to attach a string to a stump in the water and hook various fish to the string. This way allows fishermen to retrieve the fish while faking that they actually caught them, just in case they were paired up in the boat with a competitor. There was the story that Ray Scott told me about a man who showed up for a tournament wearing a full-length raincoat even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky — his partner later discovered the man had a string of bass draped around his neck. There was the guy in the U.K. who last year won a bass fishing tournament with a 13-pounder, only to have the second-place finisher recognize the giant bass from a recent trip he had taken to the local aquarium with his daughter. They called the aquarium and, sure enough, it was missing a big bass. People have been caught buying fish off of noncompetitors on the lake during an event, or sharing fish between colluding teams.
- kristjansson 3y ago
  > his partner later discovered the man had a string of bass draped around his neck Incredible. I guess you have to hope the other person catches early so they don’t notice the smell!
- ryandrake 3y ago
  There was a video[1] going around about a year ago of some guys who cheated in a fishing tournament by stuffing weights inside their fish. Wild what people are willing to do! 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga3Rj9oaMWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga3Rj9oaMWA
- acangiano 3y ago

causality0 3y ago

You don’t just pull the fish in with all your might. That’s a sure way to break your line and let the fish escape. How much stronger would fishing line have to be before you could brute force 95% of fish in?

slcjordan 3y ago
They definitely make line that is strong enough but it's thicker and fish that spot it are hesitant to take the bait. So there's a balance: strong enough not to lose fish but thin enough to gain an edge over the other competitors.
- Y_Y 3y ago
  I was thinking about designing a line that thickened and strengthened in response to the tension of reeling, but that I realized a negative poisson ratio was the opposite of what I wanted.
  - pontifk8r 3y ago
    How many kids do you have, dad engineer?
munificent 3y ago
This is a complicated question. In general, yes, you can absolutely put strong enough line on that will let you haul a fish straight out of the water dangling from it. It you fish for small fish (perch, bluegill, etc.), that's basically what you do every time. They are small enough that even the lightest line will still hold them. The challenge, though, is that the stronger the line is, the more visible it is to the fish, and the less finesse you have when fishing with it. More visible line can spook fish and get you fewer bites. And a thicker, stiffer line can make it harder for you to work the lure in a realistic way that entices fish to bite. So you're always making the trade-off where lighter line means more bites but a greater risk of not landing the fish if it breaks the line. Stronger lines mean fewer bites but if you get a hookset, you can probably land the fish. There are other complications too: fish aren't the only thing in the water. Stronger line can help you not lose lures if it gets tangled on branches or other obstructions. On the other hand, lighter line is more fun to fish with. You feel what the fish is doing much more clearly and the fight is more interactive. Catching a small fish using a big stiff fishing rod with heavy line feels like listening to music with earplugs in. You lose a lot of the experience. Also, there are different kinds of line: monofilament, fluorocarbon, braid. And you don't have to use the same kind of line for the whole length. Sometimes it makes sense to have a leader (a short section of line at the end) that's lighter or heavier than your main line. One of the delights of fishing is that it's an endless problem-solving exercise in gear optimization.

gumby 3y ago

I first parsed "competitive bass fishing cheaters" as cheaters who competed with each other for the best technique. Then I realised that was silly -- they are cheating to beat everyone. A classic "garden path" sentence. Then I realised that both interpretations are correct.

rrr_oh_man 3y ago
For the other lucky 9,999: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
- ugh123 3y ago
  Wow thank you. Been looking for a definition of these kinds of sentences for a long time!
  - shagie 3y ago
    https://xkcd.com/2793/ https://xkcd.com/2793/ is the relevant xkcd... and the explain https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2793:_Garden_Path_Sentence https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2793:_Garden_Path...
    - rrr_oh_man 3y ago
      ...And for the "other 9,999" part: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ and https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousand https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousan...
Y_Y 3y ago
I misread that as "garden path sentience" and imagined that you were a paved walkway who had gained the power of self-reflection.

dang 3y ago

Discussed (just a bit) at the time: The Weight of Guilt: Competitive bass fishing cheaters - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694091 - Dec 2014 (1 comment)

pluc 3y ago

Aw, one of my first project in web development was a fishing tournament platform so for some odd reason that's dear to my heart (though I care little for the actual thing). Probably the best intro you can have to "never trust user input".

rpmisms 3y ago

Count Dankula (yes, Nazi pug guy) did a good mini-doc on one of the worst offenders. Got me interested, and wow, this goes a lot deeper than I thought. Of course every sport has cheaters, but some don't seem to be as egregious.

acangiano 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQwtPh4wOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQwtPh4wOA

seabass-labrax 3y ago

SEEKING WORK | Any pleasant body of water | Remote working not possible Experienced seabass seeking freelance position. Open to partners for fishy business at tournaments. Very handsome and sure to impress any tournament judge. (Note: only accepting contracts on a 'paid relocation back to water' basis).

hollywood_court 3y ago

I’m pretty sure there is a Carl Hiaasen novel that deals with this.

nextworddev 3y ago

Had no idea Grantland was still around

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]