Just got back from an Islamorada fishing trip.The sailfish bite was slow.The highlight of the trip was a daytime swordfishing trip.This slyle of fishing is amazing and a lot of work.If you miss a bite or don’t get a bite you have to reel a twelve to fifteen pound chunk of concrete up from 1700’. From 7 A.M. to 7:30 P.M. we were able to make 5 drops.We had bites on every drop.We hooked our first fish on the third drop and fought him for 2 hours & 20 minutes and then pulled the hook.On our last drop we hooked up @ 5:45 P.M.& pulled the hook on it right @ 7:30 just yards below the boat,yes that’ll make you queezy @ the gut.Don’t know how big the first one was but the second one was about 250#.This is an awesome style of fishing and very specialized.I am going to take the lesson learned and try it off Charleston where we succesfully catch the swords at night.
There was an interesting editorial by Doug Olander in this months Sportfising Mag talking about the daytime swordfishing and how so many boats have gone to electric reels because of the amount of weight used and the desire for meat. He mentioned the use of a brek away weight as a possiblity, but the jist of the article was how popular this practice has become in Florida and the possible impact on fish populations with the use of electric instead of true sportsfishing.
You got that right.There were 4 of us rotating and it took about 45 minutes to get it up.I don’t think you would hurt the stocks to bad the way we did it, but I think it would be a whole different ball game with an electric reel,the bites came within minutes of getting the bait down.
Yeah, the sailfishing should pick up this week after the cold weather. I went daytiming 3 days ago and pulled off a fish as well. Its some work to crank back up, but its worth it. C-level, I meet you at ripley just before I left for Islamorada. We were at BnM but moved to Holiday isle because BnM was just to shallow for my draft. Next time you down shoot me an email if you need an extra hand. I have a lot of spare time since I’m not booking charters till the fishing picks up