Artificial intelligence owes a couple of renowned fly-fishing writers a deeply legitimate apology. After being passed over by an AI-generated piece submitted by Romanian “author” Andrei Romanov, real human writers were rightfully recognized by the John D. Voelker Foundation and the American Museum of Fly Fishing last month when the legit winner in the annual Robert Traver Fly Fishing-Writing Award was announced after the AI winner was rightfully disqualified. The human winner? Steve Duda, the long-time writer and editor with credits ranging from Rolling Stone to The Flyfish Journal. Of note: author and longtime Hatch Magazine contributor Tim Schulz was also recognized by the foundation with a well-deserved honorable mention.

Duda’s award-winning piece, “The Goddess of Compassion, Holding Open the Door,” is an instant classic that will resonate with many fly fishers who, for reasons that likely dwell deep in the souls of the river-wanderers, collect rocks and carry them along on their angling adventures. Schulz’s entry, “The Big Bang Theory,” is a tale about trout mysteriously missing from a pond, and a mule with a hankering for peppermint.

Great stories, both, the unfortunate reality is that both winners, plus four other finalists, were initially victimized by Romanian writer Andrei Romanov, who employed AI to craft the initial winner, “The Restraint of the Hunter.” The use of AI is obviously in violation of the Traver Award’s rules, and the piece, after being filtered through AI-detecting software, was soundly relegated to the contest’s round file.

As to how Romanov’s fake story was initially determined the winner of the prestigious annual contest, the explanation is perfectly plausible. And, while it’s tempting to rebuke the judging committee for being duped by AI, the effort to uncover and confirm the fraud really deserves a healthy helping of praise.

“During our initial blind judging, the entry stood out for its vivid international setting and seemingly deeply personal cultural details. At the time, some judges did note several technical and narrative anomalies within the text,” wrote Traver Award Committee Chairman David Van Wie in a prepared statement. “However, because the story appeared to be written by an international author translating a personal memoir into English, the committee initially gave the author the benefit of the doubt, attributing those inconsistencies to translation nuances and overlooking them in favor of the story's compelling regional atmosphere and story about a personal and cultural shift in conservation ethic.”

But, enough doubt about the piece's origin lingered. The committee chose to conduct an independent review of Romanov’s piece, which included personal contact with the author asking him to explain his writing processes and the use of AI-detecting platform Pangram. The committee pushed other stories written by the same author through Pangram — all of the stories, including the Voelker Award-winner, were determined to be 100 percent crafted by AI. Romanov’s supporting materials proved to be nefarious, as well — a handwritten document provided to the committee was determined to be crafted after the AI-generated piece was submitted for award consideration.

“Using multimodal analysis, we examined the 10-page handwritten document and discovered that it was not an original rough draft, but a post-hoc back-translation of the English AI manuscript,” Van Wie reported. “The handwritten pages contained literal, word-for-word machine-translation errors of English idioms and fly-fishing terminology, transcription slips from copying off a screen, pages scanned out of chronological order, and a visible ink correction where the author had initially copied a grammatical gender error originally made by the AI in the submitted English manuscript before crossing it out on the paper.”

To further back up the fraud discovery, the committee employed a native speaker of Romanian to review both the submitted manuscript and the handwritten notes.

“She immediately confirmed the same translation errors, narrative inconsistencies, and unnatural machine-translated phrasing (such as translating a fishing "line" using a word no angler speaking that language would ever use),” Van Wie wrote in his statement.

Finally, the committee put photographs submitted by the initial award-winner meant to provide proof of his piece’s legitimacy through an AI review. Not surprisingly, the AI detection tools “indicated that the photographs themselves were likely AI-generated or modified,” Van Wie wrote.

The unfortunate rub, of course, is that Duda, Schulz, and four other finalists selected from 77 total contest entries, were passed over for a craftily created AI entry that captured the attention of the judges. That something artificial could not only pass muster, but find its way to the top of the heap is beyond alarming and likely spells trouble for all who craft literary works.

Thankfully, the committee sniffed out the true origin of the piece and awarded the $2,500 prize to Duda (and the $250 honorable mention prize to Schulz). The lesson? The sophisticated nature of artificial intelligence can and will be used for nefarious purposes. It nearly hijacked fly fishing’s most prestigious literary award.

“For me, fly fishing has always been a way into stories about places, people, history, and the things we only notice when we’re out there—the stuff that helps us understand the world and, maybe, become a little more human in it,” Duda said with a touch of irony. “To have this work recognized by the Traver Award means a great deal to me.”

The Traver Award was created in 1994 by publisher Nick Lyons to posthumously honor John D. Voelker, a renowned Michigan Supreme Court justice who wrote fly-fishing stories under the pen name Robert Traver. A new anthology of Traver Award-winning essays from 2008 through 2025 is now available at booksellers and online via Stackpole Books/Globe Pequot.