Whaddya think?????
 

He's full of ice for sure.

thats cold

He stuffed it I bet. Just my .02 cents. The weight is just too close to the previous top blue. What some people will do!:smash:

Who knows. I could go both ways on this. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. I think the officials did the right thing though.

I know how ferocious blues are and they chomp at everything. it takes a while for them to die in a cooler. I wouldn't doubt it if the fish swollowed some ice. I know I ain't ever sticking anything in any blues mouth with all those teeth, what kind of tool would you use to get ice all the way down into a bluefish's stomach? I suppose it could happen either way.

My opinion is the presence of a foreign object, even ice, in the fish's stomach leads me to think it was put there unnaturally. Every blue I've ever brought in has been regurgitating baitfish it has already eaten, in its attempt to free itself of the hook... If it had been my fish in the same circumstance, I would expect I would have been disqualified from the Derby, which would include the leading bass as well. It just puts a stink on the whole tournament, which will no doubt cast a pall on his presence on the stage as current leader in the boat bass division.

Another tournament, another cheat. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Any ice swallowed by a live fish is going to melt from the fish's body temp. Any fish cold enough to preserve ice isn't alive enough to swallow it. Bluefish die with their mouths shut (or barely open). Even if a small ice cube got past their teeth it is not going down their gullet without something pushing it. As for several ounces of ice? Please!
Classy guy.

Indubitably:agree:

I'm always leary of a fish someone says they caught on the "first cast of the first morning" but who knows??

This guy's giving me a bad name

Years ago, In Maryland , A guy did the same thing.
His issue was he had 2 little boys with him .

They sent him out the door , it was ugly. I still have it all on video someplace ><>.............

well there you go George :uhuh:
that explains it enough for me

they way the guy says about stuffing it into the ice in the cooler several times is suspicious , I can maybe see some ice getting into the throat but not the stomach.

another reason I don't enter OTW since the first year.
cheating is just like stealing

Its funny the sides of people that come out during these tourneys.

Thats why in my eyes you cant beat the small club tourneys and a tourney like the Habs. Just good freinds, socializing, and some good fishing in between.

OK this clinched it for me. CHEATER!

It is pretty rampant.
Wasn't A formerly well known charter capt was caught in a tournament with two frozen soda bottles inside a large bass during a tournament? Talk about blatant!?

:jester:

sounds like this guy thought he had a good plan - well it may have been, since it didn't get booted.

Like we've said before, cheats are everywhere in these high-profile things.

That's OK. I know someone who poured lead shot into a plastic bag, wrapped it in small bubble wrap and shoved it into a 32# bass to make it 38 and beat his best friend in a tourney.

i have a cold and a head ache

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c6...b1/icecube.jpg

Maybe if you need to have a contest you should do it by overall length. Longest to heaviest what does it matter.
If we hunted people what would be a better trophy, a fat guy or a tall guy?
Hard to cheat length.
:huh:

numbskull wrote:
"Another tournament, another cheat. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Any ice swallowed by a live fish is going to melt from the fish's body temp. Any fish cold enough to preserve ice isn't alive enough to swallow it. Bluefish die with their mouths shut (or barely open). Even if a small ice cube got past their teeth it is not going down their gullet without something pushing it. As for several ounces of ice? Please!
Classy guy."

obviously you guys who have posted don't slurry your fish because if you did you would know that the fish, whatever kind they may be, get stuffed with the ice slurry when your running in. and the fishes body temperature doesn't melt the ice either, because it's in a slurry of ice and salt water.

Uh....I have slurried fish more than a few times, and run with them in the slurry. However, I don't think a slurry would have "stuffed" cubes into the cavity of a bluefish, where it was found upon opening the fish. FYI, given the majority of the posters here, this ain't their first rodeo....

The internal temperature of a living bluefish at this time of year would be 65 degrees. Any "swallowed ice" is going to melt long before external cooling lowers the temperature to 32 degrees. Also, have you ever tried to pick up and weigh ice slurry? The committee found ice chunks in the fish which they put on a scale and weighed. I've cleaned literally thousands of bluefish over the years that were kept on ice for hours. I've never found ice in any of them. Then again I've never had one that might win me a tournament if it gained a few ounces. Seems that this dude did. Believe what you want. He is still on the board with a leading bass......wonder where that might have been caught. ;)........but I don't fish the Derby so it doesn't matter to me.

I am going to be politically incorrect and state my opinion–bluntly.

It is absolute bull….that a live bluefish would swallow ice cubes in a cooler. It is bull….that a bluefish, being jammed into a cooler headfirst would be forced to swallow an ice cube, either alive or dead. The gullets of even the largest bass and blues is a muscle, and a tight closed structure… either when the fish is alive or when dead and rigor mortis sets in.

That an experienced fisherman would state these hypotheticals as explanation for ice cubes in a fish gullet impugnes him.

I think he is A big liar
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Consider this point...

The guy already had the leading boat bass entered in the derby. When a fish is weighed into the vineyard derby and it takes first place, the weigh station attendant cuts the fish open and inspects it for foreign matter...everyone knows this.
With this said, the guy's leading bass was most certainly opened up and inspected. Given this fact, the guy would have to be a complete fool to intentionally stuff the bluefish full of ice, would he not? He had to know it would be cut open.
I can't believe it was intentional,but at the same time I'm at a loss to explain how that quantity of ice got in the fish's gut. The committee must have reached the same conclusion, otherwise they would have disqualified him from the derby, not just the bluefish.

You have a good point Mike, I guess he is the only one who knows the truth
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