Party Boat pool "irregularity"?

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On a sea bass trip on an unnamed boat, I was involved in a pool fish situation I thought was questionable at best, and overtly crooked at worst..

I was with my adult son, and although it was not a great day for us, we had some fish.. At one point I caught our best fish of the day, a decent size knot head sea bass. You know the look, blue and black with a big hump on the head..
The other look I often see with sea bass is the more brownish color ones that are leaner, no hump, shaped more like a smallmouth bass/yellow perch etc...
Anyway, I knew we had a good shot at the pool, as it was a day without a lot of big fish..

When the trip ended, there was NO call for the pool at the bow where i was sitting.. Finally, I asked the mate who was digging around in a bucket, and pulled out the largest fish in it, a lean brown sea bass about the same length as mine. He put it on the balance scale. I knew we had won the pool, seeing that fish.
However, when he put my thicker fish on that scale, it never moved, not even a 1/4 inch.. It was like the skinnier fish out weighed mine 10-1.. Never did the mate center both fish on the scale as I have often seen them do... I looked at my son, and we walked away shocked.. It didn't even look close, but we accepted the proof of our own eyes....

anyway, as we talked on the way home, and I thought about my last pool win a few years ago, I realized we might have been scammed.. Last time I "won" a pool, the mate balanced both fish several times, centering the scale .. When it didn't move either way, he split the pool between myself and another angler...

However, as the mate held up the balance scales on this boat, he never made an attempt to center it. and that much skinnier fish stayed up top locked.. That scale never budged, as though the screw that held the balance beam in place at the center was locked down tight. When my fish was placed on the scale, there should have been a slight movement, even if the other fish was a bit heavier, it would seem .
It is what it is... this boat has lost a customer forever, and i usually went out with them once or twice a year.. No big loss, i know, and they do need to take care of their regulars, not once a year out of staters..

I don't like seeing mates digging into the buckets of fish of guys fishing alongside them for pool fish, but I have seen it before on various boats...

I often wondered why these days I see a lot of old timers NOT entering the pool.. They might be aware of something I am not aware of...

Should I have said something to the captain as soon as this happened, or would that have been inappropriate? I always feel out of place as I am an unknown among groups of guys that are obviously good friends.

I just thought at the time, that " no these things don't really happen, these guys have to be honest to stay in business", but when I replayed the scenario after we stepped off the boat, and even still today, I realized that maybe there is some distasteful behavior going on... In times past,I have seen half frozen fish with white cloudy white eyes win the pool in
the past, by the son of the woman running the galley.. It was long ago, and I didn't have a pool candidate that day, but that day burned into my memory.. Just wondering if pool cheating by head boat employees really happens?.. Maybe not, but I will no longer be entering any, like many other old timers ... bob