(Click to View)

Rafts, Rivalries, and the Burning Dot.
Roger Rex woke up with one thing on his mind: BEAT RAY ROSHER.. He repeated the mantra again and again under his breath. For more than a decade a burning dot of frustration had grown in Roger, and Ray’s outlandish string of successes at the Miami Invitational Raft Tournament had only made it worse. Ray had not only won the prestigious event since its creation three years ago, he had embarrassed the field. It was getting ridiculous, and Roger was going to put a stop to it.
The raft tournament started as a casual way for South Florida charter boat captains to let off steam at the end of the sailfish season. The tournament takes some of South Florida’s top captains, sticks them in inner tube rafts, and sets them adrift on the Gulf Stream. The goal is to see who can catch the most sailfish and other gamefish while fishing from a low-tech inner tube. Anglers and their support teams rig the rafts with rod holders, bait pens, drift socks and assorted other accessories. Support boats are allowed to live-chum and otherwise make sure no one drowns. They can also help revive fish if need be, and can reposition rafts at certain intervals. Technology is stripped away, leaving only a man and the ocean.

The Calm Before the Storm:
The mood at the dock is jovial. Tournament Director Dan Kipnis jaws with the anglers. Capt. Matty Tambor, the tournament’s founder, doles out bait. Various teams unveil the closely-guarded design features of their new rafts. Ray Rosher strolls down the plank and the ambient chatter hushes ever so slightly. Every angler here has lost to Ray at some point in his life. Roger Rex has isolated himself at the end of the dock. He reveals that he and Ray typically go head to head in eight to 10 tournaments a year. “Ray’s been beating my ass and taking my money for 15 years,” he says, then calms himself. His voice trails off and he looks away. “He always beats me.” At the otherend of the dock, Ray is tending to his gear. He’s diplomatic about the fleet’s desire to see him fall from grace. “No one expresses that verbally, but you see the rafts get better and better. Clearly these guys want to win. They want the prestige,” he says.

The Competition Begins:
Support boats run the anglers out to the color line indicating the edge of the Gulf Stream, and set the 13 rafts over a two-mile stretch off Key Biscayne. Once on the water it becomes clear that no matter the mood at the dock, these captains are out for blood. Fangs are clicking. Everyone’s hands are busy adjusting and reeling and resetting an incredible array of lines. Seas kick up to two to four feet, cresting over the top of some of the rafts. Radio reports from nearby recreational boats tell of sailfish being caught two miles north of the fleet.
Roger sets up shallow, at about 90 feet, where some recreational boats had caught sailfish earlier in the day. Ray sets up in deeper water. 20 minutes after lines in, someone in the middle of the fleet hooks up. “Fish on!” yells Kitt Toomey of Team Get Lit. The fish runs like a tuna. Kitt clears lines and manages to keep the fish untangled.
Within minutes he and his team see color. Sure enough, it’s a blackfin tuna. Though sailfish count for 50 points each, fun fish like tuna, kingfish and mahi earn points for poundage. Roger is the next to hook up. Line rips off his reel at high speed. Could be anything. A nine-pound kingfish comes to the raft. It’s not the 50-point sailfish he’s after, but it’s better than nothing. Several other boats in the fleet get strikes. Most of the fish are small tuna, mahi or kings. Ray is one of the few anglers to remain fishless. For the first time in his life, Roger is beating Ray
Rosher.

Counter Punching:
There is a mood among the fleet: you can catch all the snake kings and peanut mahi
you want and it won’t matter, Ray Rosher is going to work his magic and destroy you. About an hour into the tournament he does. Two of his reels whine. He’s got a double. One fish has real power. He clears the lines and alternates between rods with the acumen of a concert pianist – calm, precise, almost stoic in his bobbing raft. He works the first fish in and soon discovers it’s a blackfin tuna of around 22 pounds. The other fish also fights like a tuna, but is much harder to stop. It may indeed be a sailfish. Within minutes he sees a football-shaped flash about 30 feet down and realizes it’s a tailwrapped blackfin of about 24 pounds. Ray, as predicted, pulls into the lead with 46 points.
Though Ray is in the lead, he has no clue. “I knew nothing,” he would say later. “My support boat was telling me stories about how everyone was kicking my butt. My own team was messing with my head.” With his crew razzing him, Rosher is truly a man alone on the ocean. He resets his spread, keeps his kite baits dangling at just the right level and hopes for the best.
Further up the fleet, Bill Cordis hooks intoa big fish. In the distance, a sailfish launches across three-foot seas. It’s the first sail of the tournament. After a frenzied fight, Bill leads his fish to the raft. This is the tricky part. As the sail keels on its side, exhausted, Cordis reaches down to grab the beak. The fish has one last headshake. The bill nicks the raft and air rushes out. Bill grabs the beak, stands up and wrestles the fish onto the raft, where he removes the circle hook. He slips the fish back into the water and it swims slowly away. With his tube deflated, his wood frame is the only thing keeping him afloat.

Black shapes shoot through the water around Roger Rex’s raft. His bait panics. He hooks one tuna, then two, then three. Finally,four of his lines peel off in different directions. One of them seems to be floating above the ocean. He’s hooked a goonie bird. If only they counted for points, he thinks. The first fish sets out on a lateral run and wraps all four lines. Roger cuts a kite loose. He weaves the rod through the mess of mono and manages tofight the fish clean. All the other fish stay tight. The goonie bird flails in the distance. Bit by bit, Roger gains line on allthe fish. The goonie, onceunhooked, skirts away. Roger lands the first two fish. As he’s landing the third, disaster strikes. He swings the gaff down. The fish struggles. The gaff misses the mark and stabs into the tender skin of the inner tube. Air rushes out, hissing and spitting as water laps against the side of the raft. Roger and his three tuna are sinking.
Back at Ray’s raft his support crew starts yelling and pointing into the water. They’ve spotted an 80-pound yellowfin tuna streaking through his spread. Ray gets hit and the fish takes off fast, but breaks off in the middle of its run. By the time Ray resets his spread and tosses out his freeline baits, two sailfish approach his raft and circle. They veer and investigate as if he’s a piece of flotsam long lost at sea. This is his chance to crush the competition. But he can’t get the sails to eat. They disappear into the incessant chop. Roger is now waist deep in water. His gear is almost submerged. Crestfallen, he ties his raft to the support boat, steps aboard and collapses to the deck. He curls into the fetal position and begins to weep. Capt. Sef Stupakoff, support boat leader, kneels down and puts his hand on Roger’s shoulder.
“Ray’s only got two tuna, bro. You’re in the lead.”
“But my raft,” says Roger. “My raft.”
“Look at me,” says Stupakoff. Roger is inconsolable and turns away. Stupakoff slaps him across the face.
“Look at me, goddamit!” He has Roger’s attention. “We’re gonna patch this raft, we’re gonna get you back on the water, do you understand? You’re going to win this goddam tournament. Now suck it up.” Roger remembers the 15 years of defeats, the pain of telling family and friends that he had once again lost to Ray Rosher. He remembers the burning dot.
He rises to his feet, takes a deep breath and wipes his nose on his sleeve. Stupakoff would comment later at the after-party, “I had to talk him down, man. Sometimes that’s what a captain has to do.”
As Roger recoups and his team patches the raft, Ray hooks up again. It’s a kingfish, a five-pound “snake.” Against Roger’s three tuna and one kingfish, it does nothing for his standings. The support boat’s wall of silence leaves Ray clueless again as to his ranking. He can only assume other anglers have landed sailfish and his title is in jeopardy. Elsewhere in the fleet, Team Pelagic/XXX hooks and loses a sailfish. George Mitchell lands a big 30-pound bull dolphin, but Roger is still in the lead.
It is time for Roger to strike the final blow. Sef repositions him at the northern end of
the fleet. The water is more dynamic, it moves, has better color. But his raft is still slowly leaking. With 45 minutes left in the tournament Roger hooks up with his first sailfish. It runs at the raft and shoots underneath, fouling gear as it goes. “I thought he was gone,” Roger said later. During the battle, the raft continues to fail. “As soon as I grabbed the leader on that fish the hook. came out,” he said. “He was bill-wrapped.I got lucky.” By the end of the battle he is waist-deep in water again.
As the fish swims away the raft buckles. “Give me a life preserver, I can fish without the raft!” Roger screams. Stupakoff has to grab him by the arm and pull him aboard the support boat. “It’s over, Roger. It’s not in your hands anymore,” he says. Roger and Team Scatterbrain are winning the tournament with three tuna, a kingfish and a sailfish (128 points), but for the last 20 minutes of the tournament they can do nothing but watch in anguish.

It's the bottom of the ninth:
With five minutes to go, Ray has only 48 points. He needs a double-header of sailfish to win. He has time for one last drift – a bases-loaded home run, if you will. If anyone can do it, it’s Ray. He decides to start the drift shallow and immediately spots two sailfish. “I got bit on the right, short,” he said later. “I fought the first fish and left a bait out for the second.” His crew can’t believe it. Is he really going to pull this off? News of the potential double spreads through the fleet. Roger, on his way back to the marina, hears rumors over the radio. He assumes Ray has done it again, that his dreams will be washed away like a child’s sandcastle in a hurricane.
Ray’s bait tries to flee. The reel whines. He puts the first rod down, grabs the second rod and prepares to set the hook. This is the fish that will win the tournament for the third year running. This is the fish that will destroy the dreams of Roger Rex. He pulls back on the rod and feels the horrible sensation of nothingness. He whiffs. The fish, spooked, swims off. The tournament is over. The great Ray Rosher has struck out. Roger Rex’s dreams have come true. At the afterparty, Roger is jubilant, collecting high-fives all around. “Ray Rosher could be the best fisherman I’ve known in my life,” says Roger. “I have never beaten him… Finally! Finally! I don’t care about anything else.” After the award ceremonies and charity giveaways and handshakes, Ray Rosher steps to the side of the room for a moment. He looks over at the crowd. Roger is surrounded, holding court with his crew and friends. “It was his day,” says Rosher. He pauses and pushes the next few words out. “I’m really happy for him.”


Editor’s Note: Roger Rex and Ray Rosher are actually good friends and share the utmost respect for each other’s humanity and fishing ability. And no, Roger did not weep about his punctured raft.