Repost, Swordfishing... NDB

[Captain Fred Archer]

Fess,

Yeah, I remember that squid concentrate...we spilled it the first time we used it and never could get the stink out of the carpet. Nasty! And I just don't believe that scent has a place in attracting swords. Catfish, carp, and believe it or not, halibut and fluke, yes, but when it comes to swords, I believe that the light is the most important factor and that no scent helps cut down on the shark bites.

Big, right on, on that depth thing. Daytime swords in particular get locked into one basic depth when you fight them. I'd have to estimate that every day sword that we have caught (surface baited fish, not the deep drops) would only go so deep and no deeper, most likely a thermocline thing or having something to do with body gasses they didn't get to expel when up top, no matter how long we fought them. Night fish are all over the place. Of course, both jump, but you can see them clearly in the daytime and if it's a hawg it's a sight to see! Kinda like a rhinoceros jumping they are so fat. Reminds me of those awesome thresher sharks that look like they can hardly swim, let alone get great air and go like hell. Man, that is one great fish too!

What a great thread!

Website www.FredArchersWorldofFishing.com

[Captain Fred Archer]

Here's a daytime sword going ballistic. Hard to tell it's a sword, but it is. Sorry for the black and white, but that's what my client shot it with. A Cabo fish, couple hundred pounds.

The "Turd in a punch bowl" is the drawing of a giant squid tentacle. This is a great, very tough, long-lasting bait that swordfish (and halibut and big fluke) love. It's also a good one for when there are a lot of squid hammering your bait. Stuff it in a hollow squid, as shown with a squid strip, and it lasts even longer.

(You fluke guys, this is a super big fluke bait. Not the little tentacles off of regular bait squids - those are winter flounder baits, but nice tentacles or ends of them off of a giant squid. And West Coast Halibut hounds, this or an octupus tentacle, is one of the halibut longliners' absolute favorite baits. East coast guys should note that the length limit for fluke in many areas is now exactly the same as it is for California halibut and our Halibut Troller's Bible is loaded with information on how to catch big, keeper fluke too.)

Website www.FredArchersWorldofFishing.com

[El Capo]

The song remains the same...different strokes for different folks. And although I truly believe that the most anal riggers are the best, I am an old geezer now and I confuse easily and reject doing too much and getting too little in return for it.

I have been killing and inspecting the stomach contents of swordfish of all sizes, including a couple over six hundred pounds (plank boat fish - I have spent a lot of time aboard a buddy's plank boat and have also checked the stomach contents of every one of the fish we stuck) and I can tell you for an absolute fact that big baits don't mean big fish and little lures don't mean little fish when it comes to swordfish. In fact, in my books I call them "Ocean going garbage trucks". It's downright shocking how many truly tiny baits swordfish of all sizes eat. And if you do find a big squid or finbait in one, it's in chopped up pieces, not whole.

Myself and others who have been in the game since the earliest days all started out with the big squid thing and we missed and snagged and lost way too many fish. It was Skippy Smith, the legendary captain of The Madam and The Hooker, who probably still captained for more world record broadbills than any other man and who has caught far more than I or anyone else that I know who, thank God, came up with the simple cure for missing and losing so many swords. It was through the logical and natural expedient of cutting down drastically on the size of the baits. And I'll tell you something about that, small baits not only caught a helluva lot swords of all sizes for us, I didn't miss all of the messing around and slime and stink and hassle of rigging up a big squid...and then missing a fish on it, or having it get sharked. I don't miss any of that stuff at all.

The biggest swordfish that I have ever seen, alive or dead, harpooned or rod and reeled was a daytime surface goliath that we hooked on a crew trip to the Cabrillo Seamount down in Cabo. We had a strong, talented angler on the rod. I was down in the 'pit with another experienced captain, a Mexican one, and Captain Bobby Dobson, a great wheel man was running my boat from up in the tuna tower. The fish jumped twice, a remarkable thing, since she was so huge. Those jumps were less than fifty feet from the boat with blood and squids pouring out of her mouth and gills like some kind of fire hose.

She was hooked on all of the right stuff on a dedicated and completely pro rigged daytime swordfish leader and outfit and had an "extra kirbed" stainless 13/0 hook way down in her guts that I had fed to her much longer than usual when we baited her. When she jumped the first time I turned to the others and said, "Did you see that? She is ours, as long as we take our time and don't do anything stupid (which we did, but I don't want to even think about that)."

Three and a half hours later with 43# of drag on her from a one thirty two speed, the last hour or so of which with the drag at sunset because she had died deep on us and we busted the leader off when Bobby collapsed at the wheel (he had never come down from the tower and was exhausted and hatless in the tropical sun) and we spun over the leader, Chickey, the other captain had his hand crushed and broke some fingers when he shoved the heavy, pig skin leadering glove under the leader to try to keep it from breaking on the corner and with a noise like a pistol shot she was gone, sinking slowly, with no blood now and a purely dead swordfish brown.

It was one of the greatest disappointments in my fishing life and we all deeply regretted that she had died and been wasted. How big? I'll let the length of the fight and the gear that fish was fought on speak for that. She was literally unimaginable and I will never forget the site of her, hanging in the air!

The important point isn't the fish story here, but rather, it was the bait that this monster ate...it was an 8" caballito (goggle eye), fresh dead and bridled.

And the fish in the picture in my previous post (I am the good looking, slender blond guy, not the big, ugly, bloody bear with the knife- LOL) was also taken on an 8" bait - and artificial one, no less!

I admire and respect the rigging talents of any kind of fisherman, but I am also a practical fisherman and successful charter captain and broadbill killer who was never willing to spend his or his crew's time doing more than needed to be done to get the job done, and done better.

That's a big fish on the deck in the picture below...SHE made it look like a dink!

Purple Fever...if you catch it, you will never get over it!

www.FredArchersWorldofFishing.com

Fred,where did you get that photo?I believe that is the deck of the 6x(PEZ)before I ran it.

And I was wondering if you were familiar with GJ's technique for daytime surface fish.I am well aware of it.As you know Kyle Williams(a good friend of mine since we were kids)worked on that boat(Bloodstock/Fresh Start) forever and eventually took over the operation.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Cap,

GJ was a (nutso) pal of mine for many years down in Cabo. We all started really catching day swords after Thomas and Jose Lopez, both Mazatlan guys, taught us the secrets of catching daytime swordfish. This was before Bloodstock and while GJ was running the 31 Bert with Thomas. We fished together back and forth on both of our boats for grins and giggles, only a couple of times on his boat with charters and never with charters on mine. I'll tell you a typically nuts (for GJ) story in a sec. If you got to know him well he was a lovable, good guy down deep inside, but man, he was one wild and crazy dude who, as you probably know, got himself in all kinds of crazy shit!

These were the earliest days, before your other buddy was on the scene. I remember him, but never knew him. Back then it was GJ, Thomas, us, and one of the Picante captains, who were constantly after and catching the day swords. I forget the Picante guy's name, I might remember as I write this, but he was one helluva fisherman who died very young in an automobile accident. Hugo was his name, I think. We met after an impromptu boat race up the Pacific beaches after I thought that another infamous captain of my acquaintence, Daniel (who I now call "Snow Flake"), was sneaking up on me to do one of his crazy, short beam wake jumps, but too late, I realized it was a Picante guy and they were my peers and I didn't want to get a bad start with them.

Anyway, with my deckhand up in the tower watching and telling me "Here comes Daniel, senior. Quidado!", I started edging up the throttles on my new, turbo charged 350 Yannies as he got closer and closer, but the gap kept shortening slower and slower. Finally, as he got really close I jammed the hammers and trimmed her up a bit and blew a big azzed roostertail on him. Then I slowed down to let "Daniel" come abreast so I could high five him, but when I looked over it was HUGO, who I knew was Picante's top guy. Oh, shit!

Well, he waved me on with a big smile and an "adelante!", so since the damage was already done, we both pinned the throttles and I blew him away. (I was low on fuel and we didn't have any passengers and he probably had a lot of fuel and did have a full load of passengers, and that sure helped us.) It was funny as hell watching all of the windows getting opened by his crew to cut down on wind resistance, but he didn't have a prayer.

When we came around the Arch and swung into Cabo Bello we lined up abreast and proceeded to the harbor, looking at each other, sticking tongues out, waggling fingers at each other and laughing our asses off. When we got back I was walking down the Malecon and walking right toward me came that Picante Captain. "Oh, shit, here it comes", I thought. He looked serious as hell and we locked eyes for the last fifty feet. When we wound up in front of each other, he stuck his hand out and said, "My name is capitan Hugo Cesena (I knew I'd remember!), como sey llama, capitan?" "Capitan Federico Archer, senior". He said, "You have a very fast boat, senior." I said, "gracias, senior. Usted tambien." And he said, "No more races between our two ladies, okay?" "Si, capitan Cesena, no mas...solamente pescando." We remained friends until the day that he died. I still miss Hugo. His kid brother runs a Picante boat to this day.

Back to GJ. One of the things I really liked about him was that when he caught a snagged sword, he said so and didn't pull any of that "he ate the bait, but the hook pulled during the fight and snagged him in the butt hole" bullshit. If he snagged one, he said so...if he mouth hooked him - which we all did most of the time fishing the way that we'd be taught to - he said so. I remember one week when he and Thomas caught seven swords. We were in a bar, yakking about it when a couple of gringos from the other side of the marina butted in and started saying some unflattering things about the truth of what GJ was saying. There were three of them and just the two of us and I knew where this was going to wind up, so being an old street fighter from Newark, New Jersey, where if you didn't know how and when to fight, you didn't get to grow up, I busted the biggest guy one in the Adam's apple and then upcut him on the sniffer on the way down and the shit hit the fan!

GJ was a tough kid and a little later had pretty much whupped his guy, but me and the second one were still at it hard when the cops showed up. This was the old days in Cabo, where fighting was fine and even admired gringo-on-gringo, Mexican-on-Mexican, but not gringo-on-Mexican. I knew that the cops actually stood back, watched the fight and bet on who was going to win. If the senior guy had his money on you, the loser went to jail and paid damages, etc. and the winner got an "attaboy" and went free. Desert justice. Fine with me. And mucho incentive to win, too! (I did, too, and not only got a hall pass from the judiciales, I got a round of applause!)

It was real wild west stuff back then and having spent most of my younger years on the streets of a tough city and hanging around waterfront bars for most of the rest of my life and actually enjoying most of the fights I got into, I loved those days, especially when some quiche-eating, sissified clown from SoCal who thought that fighting was saying nasty things to people and swinging their purses at them wound up having their asses handed to them with the cops showing up and hauling them off to the hoosegow after the beating...er, I mean, "fight". I shouldn't admit this shit, but what the hell, I was what I was, time is running out for me, and I gave up worrying about what other people think a long time ago. Man, it got to be a scene at times.

Before I forget, I'm pretty sure that picture was taken out of the tower on my boat, but it could have been off the bridge of GJ's too. I just stumbled across it the other day and thought I'd put it up to show a jumper, not what a hot shit swordy guy I am. We held our own with the others, but top swordy guys? Nah, we might have been second or even third, but that in itself was saying something. I'm quite sure that GJ and Thomas were the top dogs in that game, but like I said, we caught our share.

Man, Capo, you sure pulled my string! Here's the end. Thomas used to fish with us many times when they weren't chartered. He saw the spreaderbars, which were absolutely unheard of at the time in Cabo. We were just kicking the shit out of the fish with them and he asked GJ to try to buy some for their boat. GJ knew I didn't sell them to anyone, so I guess that's why he told him that he could catch even more fish on his Zukers and Petroleros and Green Machines (the color, not the lure). Well, it just so happened that a long time customer of his was one of my book customers who had gotten a set of bars and started using them and catching fish with them up in California. So when he and his son went down to fish with GJ, GJ brought them by to say "hi". Right away the guy told me "Hey, Fred, I brought down my set of bars to fish with and show GJ and he said that he knew all about them and they weren't any good. He says he won't let me fish with them, what do you think of that?" Grrrrr!

In the interest of getting this post over with, let me just say that the bet was made, GJ drove over to my boat and picked me up and we were on the way. I let him pick one side of the pattern (knowing that he'd pick his hot side and he did) and I took the other and put the bars out. The fish - all of them - had been on 8" squid, so I picked bars with that size teasers. I don't remember exactly, but it was at least five marlin later, every single one on the bars, that a fish finally took a mack GJ had pitched to him. A couple of minutes into the fight (and GJ, not his customer was fighting the fish), the reel blew up and would only take up line with no pressure on it, so I hand lined the fish while Thomas backed down hard as hell on it - according to our bet, that was a fifty dollar fish - and we had a wild and wooly ten minutes or so. The fish finally broke off.

Now get this. If you knew GJ, you know that maintenance wasn't his strong suit. Thus, the reel blowing up. Then, after Thomas pulled back the throttles, he, GJ and I noticed that the boat felt "heavy" and was listing toward the stern - seriously listing. One peak through a deck hatch and sure as hell, the bilge was way full of water and we were sure as hell sinking! We found out later that both bilge pumps had failed and the batteries were underwater. So, everybody up front drain the bait tank and 'pit, which was starting to fill with water, and plow along with the transom door open, hoping and praying that the engines would keep going so we wouldn't sink her. We kept her under power all the way to the heist at the back of the marina, where we slid her in and tied her off so she wouldn't sink while we waited for the sling.

Did I know GJ? Surely you jest! Hell, the question should be, "How did you survive GJ?" I loved that crazy kid. He used to call me "dad" and when I hadn't seen him in a while he'd rush up and give me an embrazo that damned near would break my back - he was as strong as a bull and in spite of being a big, pretty strong gorilla myself, it hurt! He used to laugh his ass off the times I said to him, "Hey, if I'm your dad, go to your room and stay there until I tell you you can come out, you nasty little bastard!"

Oh yeah...Mexico Lindo y mi amigos del mar y los pico largo's d'el dias. Aiii-yi-yi-yi, the greatest, finest friends I have ever made, especially those wonderful Mexican people who I loved and still do and always will. I thank God for those wonderful days down there. This is only a tiny part of the good times and the wild ones too.

And finally, I believe that it was Thomas and my friend Jose Lopez who should get the real credit for bringing the true art of actually catching very good numbers of daytime swords to Cabo and sharing it with a few of us. The first time I went about it their way, we caught one and missed another.

And it was just me and Thomas. And believe me, I was just the student. That man was a swordfish master. I feel very bad for him now that the longliners have pretty much wiped them out down there. As as you know, Cap, they are a totally addictive animal, whether you stick 'em, or rod and reel 'em.

Wow, "The Cabo Chronicles". This might have bored everybody else, but it was a great trip down memory lane for this old man!

Speaking of memories and GJ, here's a gift - actually two of them. For those who don't the players, that's GJ below and Capitan Thomas Duran above...

Website www.FredArchersWorldofFishing.com

[triniswordfish]

great read capt fred archer

[El Capo]

I was talking about the picture in post #13.That picture was taken on the PEZ.

That was a great story Fred.Glad to give you a trip down memory lane.I owed you one for posting that picture of me riding a mako shark.

[waterman482]

I've caught a few swords and i can tell you the biggest ones i have seen were caught on naked squids(no lights or glowsticks) just leader hook and bait.Keep it simple.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Cap,

You were just a kid when I took that shot of your "riding" that grander mako...hell, if that's you in your avatar, I didn't even recognize you.

Here's a shot of someone else you know with a daytime sword that for-sure ate the bait.

Website www.FredArchersWorldofFishing.com

[El Capo]

Cap,

You were just a kid when I took that shot of your "riding" that grander mako...hell, if that's you in your avatar, I didn't even recognize you.

Here's a shot of someone else you know with a daytime sword that for-sure ate the bait.

Website www.FredArchersWorldofFishing.com

Fred,you have pictures of everyone.I wish I took the time to take the photos of the first 1/2 of my life.I was too busy enjoying the moment to think about reflecting upon these things at a later date.

That fish looks like it was on for a while.I fought one for 5-1/2 hours before I pulled the hook.Had it close to the boat 4 times just not close enough.Peter tickled it with the gaff and it proceeded to empty the spool of a 50,fish just kept going and the hook pulled with about 30' of #80 left on the reel.Fish looked over #400.And that guesstimation would be #400+ dressed.It was the saddest day of my life at the time.I learned to get over it and kept tossing at daytime fish until it happened.Don't ever put the bino's down boys.You never know what you will find.As for me I need to spend more nights out there alone,trying to cure my purple fever.