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I knew that the northen gulf had swordfish since a few other captains have caught them up here. And I finaly had the crew to give them a shot. So I studied the charts and pulled my swordfish gear out of the closet to give them a shot. I picked out a deepwater dropoff point area for my starting point. The baits went out and we had about a thirty minute wait before the first fish was hooked up. The fish was pulling pretty good but was at the boat in a little under a hours time. But I goofed and put to much pressure on him and pulled the hook at the boat. So I went from hero to zero in a heartbeat. The fish was a good one and we just watched him swim away from us. Nothing left to do but reset our gear so that is what I did. On the next drift we had a double runoff one fish was not fighting and the other was going nuts. The one not fighting was a small but keeper sized sword and I had Peter the angler lock the drag up and get him to the boat so he wouldn’t tangle the much larger fish up and beak him off. Well the hook didn’t pull and the sword just fought harder and wrapped up the other fish. So I managed to get it unwrapped and not break either fish off. The the first sword decide he had enough and spit the hook after all of that. Oh well we still had the larger fish on. But as luck would have it the fish turned out to be a very large hammerhead. So I ended my first La. swordfishing trip going 0 for two.
I had another sword trip scheduled a few days later. So I knew I would have my revenge at that time. I set out on a mission to learn all of the tricks to keep theses fish on the hooks better and got some very good information to put into use on my next trip. My next obstacle came in trying to find the right sized squid for bait. The smallest squid to be found was about 16-18” long but it was the best bait available so it would have to work. I got everything rigged and ready to go but arriving at my first spot I found absolutely no current whatsoever. But I did see a bluefin tuna in the 500-700lb class skying on some form of bait. But with no current I decided to go to another spot I had marked on the charts. About a mile or so into the ride to the next spot I did a 180 and went on a feeling I had. I am glad that I did because at this spot we went 2 for 6 here is the recap of that trip.
I setup on a very steep drop off from 700’ to 2000’ in about a three mile distance. I put the swordlight in the water in 1200’ and was amazed at all of the life in the water squid,gogs,flyingfish, and three inch dolphin. So as the first bait was going out I clipped the jug to it and got it all of about fifty feet away before it gets nailed. And the fight is on Will Wall fought this fish for about ten minutes before the hook pulled. No problem we are on them so I tried to put the rest of the baits out but I couldn’t as soo as the bait got the the edge of the light circle it would get whacked. So here we are thirty minutes into the trip and our score was 0 for 3. Well I though it couldn’t get much worse I reset the baits in deeper water to have them all out when I go back to the proper depth the fish were in. As the bottom machine clicked down to the proper depth it was on as soon as the magic number appeared on the screen. This fish was different from the get go than the others. He did his best to dump a 50W as he slowed down I put Brycene into the harness for his shot at a sword. He did a good job of fighting the fish and at the hour forty five minute mark the fish became tail wrapped and he got him to the boat quickly. I grabbed the leader to set a flying gaff into him but I guess I changed the pulling point on the leader and he got his tail free and lunged away while I still had the leader and he pulled the hook. This was the largest sword I have ever seen at the side of the boat. I don’t know for sure if he was over three hundred but if we wasn’t he couldn’t of been very far from it. Great I though here I am at 0 for 4 so I reset baits to give it another shot I was determined to not get a sword on this trip. I made another drift with nothing to show for it. But the next one had a good runoff when the bottom machine was showing the magic number again. I put Will back in the harness for another shot at a fish. This time the swordfish gods were on our side and in a little under an hour I was putting the gaff to a good swordfish.
Now that the first fish was aboard I was relieved. But I remembered I had one more angler to break in on a sword so back to the starting point and reset. It took the third drift before we finaly hooked up again at 5 AM as I was reeling in the baits to go home. This fish came to the boat pretty easy at first but he saw the boat and jumped once and then he put on a pretty good fight but Ed manged to get him to the boat for the gaff shot and a ride to the dock. We ended the night with that fish with the final score of 2 for 6.
I only talked about the swordfish trips I have had lately and did not mention the tuna trips I have been running in which I have had tuna to 150lbs. and plenty of nice dolphin. Once again Venice Louisiana proved why we have the best fishing in the United States. I will add a few of the tuna and dolphin pics at the bottom of this post.
Capt. Mike
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