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The Reef Cup invitational was held Jan. 19-22, and is ranked as the 7th best billfish tournament in the world by Billfish magazine. The tournament features 60 top tournament fishing boats and fishing teams that fish their choice of 3 out of 4 days of competition. Captain Kevin Clark, director of the Grand Traverse Salmon Classic, and mate Sam Worden from Showtime Charters of Traverse City, were working the cockpit for captain Glen Miller, aboard the Wet Dream, a 40' Riviera sportfishing boat. They were joined by anglers Louis Koerner of New Orleans, Mark Arney of Oakland, Mich., and Detroit Red Wings Assistant Coach Barry Smith.
On the first day the Wet Dream team had four sailfish and finished in second place behind a local Ocean Reef crew fishing on the Buckalot. On day two they went to the top of the leader board with three more sailfish, as Buckalot took their optional lay-day. After two sailfish on day three, the Traverse City crew finished with a total of nine sailfish in the tournament, second again to Buckalot. The Wet Dream crew took their lay-day on day four, and all they could do was wait and watch the other teams finish. The Raptor started the final day with seven sails and needed three to beat the Traverse City team, while two other boats had six, two more had five, and several had four.
The Wet Dream crew was out fishing for fun on the final day of the tournament - and listening carefully to the VHF radio for calls of 'hooked-up' when a boat hooked a sailfish, and calls of 'right now' when the fish was tagged and/or released. Arney kept stats on a score sheet, closely monitoring the competition. Two other boats, the Fantasy and the Mari-El, had managed to tie the Wet Dream team by 3 p.m. with nine sails, but ties on the number of fish caught are broken by the earliest time of release. The Wet Dream fishing team was still in second place with only one hour to go and sat nervously in their seats, as either of the two boats with nine only needed one more fish to move in front. The Fantasy was a serious threat, having set the Ocean Reef Club single day catch record with 21 sails just a week before last year's Reef Cup. With just five minutes left in the tournament, a call from the Raptor broke the radio silence, "This is the Raptor, hooked-up with a double," (the Raptor still had seven fish for the tournament).
A DRAMATIC FINISH. Even if they landed both fish they would only have nine and the Wet Dream team would win on time, but the crew was worried that because sailfish travel in pods, or 'wolf packs', it was possible they could hook-up yet another sailfish while fighting the first two fish. Clark's concern materialized when the radio crackled, "Raptor now hooked up to a triple," with only one minute left until lines out (fished called in before lines out still count when landed).
Clark thought that surely the Raptor would lose one or more of the sailfish, since only 55-65% of those hooked up are usually landed. An agonizing eleven minutes passed beyond lines out when the call came, "Right now for the first fish on the Raptor." It was 4:10 and they had one, with two to go. At 4:25 came the next call, "Right now - we've got number 2 on the Raptor."
All boats had to be back in the Ocean Reef Club channel by 5:00 pm for their fish to qualify, so now it was really a race against time. Would they get the third fish? Where was the Raptor? Would they be able to make it back in time? At 4:39, the Raptor called in their third sailfish release. They had done it - a rare triple had been landed. You could barely hear the radio call as the custom Carolina sportfish raced full-throttle towards the headpin at 33 knots. The Wet Dream fishing team quit washing down the boat and headed to the point of Ocean Reef to see if the Raptor would bump them from second to third. For the Raptor, it meant $12,000 for second place, or a big goose egg if they were late. At 4:55 Clark called Barry Smith, who had to leave earlier in the day, back in Detroit to give him the down-to-the-wire finish.
Over 100 people crammed the pier head to catch the the excitement. They could see two big sportfishing boats bearing down on the channel. Surely one was the Raptor, and it looked like both vessels would be to the headpin on time. The first boat passed the channel marker with two minutes to spare, but there was no radio call. It was not the Raptor. The second boat passed the pier head with one minute to spare ... and still, there was radio silence. Where was the Raptor? At 5:00 pm the radio awakened, "Committee boat, the Raptor is at the northeast bait patch (5 miles out) ... we're not going to make it!"
That secured 2nd place and $15,000 for the crew of the Wet Dream. "We did it," Clark yelled to Smith, above the crowd noise and jubilation of the Wet Dream crew. "We came in second place."
"I figured Barry wanted to know ... and that he probably needed the money (with the NHL lock-out still in place)," joked Clark.
Buckalot landed 3 sails the final day to win the tournament with 13 sailfish, their second Reef Cup win in the last three years. Overall the 60 boats in the 20th annual Reef Cup landed and released 225 sailfish. Looks like the Critter Control team can handle their own with the aquatic critters, too.