Duping the derby

Winter finally let us go, at least south of the 55th parallel. The ice out on James Bay slowly crushed itself apart, allowing canoes to head out and catch the first days of summer. Fishhooks and nets appeared and the talk about town is now over upcoming fishing tournaments and the incredible prizes offered to the winners. This gets me thinking about how someone could win at a tournament and how, if there are any, do they catch the cheaters? And if there were any, how would they cheat and win?

Let’s see now… hmmm. Okay, there’s the bait, which could be spiced up a bit with bacon. Nothing can resist bacon. Then there’s the hook, which could be triple-barbed and tipped with a touch of knock-out juice and tied to a strong titanium leader. This could be tied to a swivel with bearings made in the zero gravity of the International Space Station and …dipped in bacon grease. The line of course, will be hand-twilled to take a heavy man’s weight without stretching or breaking. It can also latch onto helicopters flying by, but hey, who wants eat a helicopter?
Then there’s the rod, the omnipresent weapon of every fisherman. This method goes so far back that Huckleberry Finn wasn’t even thought of yet. Yes, the rod goes way back in history. Even the longest fishing story ever told, Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” is based on the fishing rod. One must choose their rod wisely or forever be cursing the broken rod. One must master and dream of catching the winning fish at the local fishing derby and going home with a boatload of cash. However, this can’t be called cheating so I guess I just released another fishing secret by mistake.
The other one is going for the difficult casts and this takes some ingenuity. If I had a drone, hypothetically speaking of course, I would carry my hook to my desired sweet spot and gently place the bacon-wrapped hook and lure, preferably a Daerdevle. Then gently bob the drone around and stick it under the nose of the little whopper that I plan to turn into moolah. The hovercraft deftly does the trick and the practice runs on unsuspecting fish pay off. I’m not sure if they have any regulations about not using a drone, so I guess it’s okay.
Sometimes the regulations come into play, like weight. If you could use extra-heavy lead weights and stuff them down the throat of a trout or walleye, you might get away with it. There’s not too much you do about the length unless you go through the process of repainting shorter lines on the measuring tape, but that involves a little break-and-entry to access the judges’ tape and switch the one you laboured on for months with the real one. This could be done using the music of Mission Impossible blaring in your earbuds until you get the nerve to do the switcheroo.
Of course, you need to get to the fishing spot using some hypertuned-triple-overhead-cammed motor, and loaded with the latest stealth technology, as the biggest secret is to not scare your prize away. A paddle canoe can outdo any modern boat as it is, the stealthiest craft in the universe when it comes to water. You see, fish are like fishers – they prefer silence and quietly shaded spots, behind rocks and in deep spots and sometimes under canoes paddled silently. This is not cheating, as it is very hard to cheat silence, so why bother. Just out ground bacon every five minutes or so around your craft and better still, bath your craft in bacon grease before launching.
Finally, bribe the judges with BLTs just to throw them off the scent of your bacon craft. And lo and behold: your prize fish shall appear on your line.