Swordfishing Off Louisiana

The swordfish bite lately has been very good. There has been about a dozen fish broght to the docks by only a few boats. I had four trips on the books but the weather only allowed me to run two of them.

The first trip started out great with our first fish on within ten minutes of setting the baits out. It was a good fish but it ate the 300' line so I left the other lines out.And the 200' line gets eaten but I didn't try and come tight on the fish until the first one was in. I could feel the fish playing with the bait and swimming around with it. I figured that a sword was like a tuna and would just follow the boat until the first one was in. And then we could begin fighting the second. Well this sword didn't know he was just suspposed to not fight and peacefully follow the boat and got tired of us and spit the bait.

That bite was the last of the night except for a slashed squid so the score was 1 for 2. But the conslation prize was some yellowfin and blackfin to go with what I am guesstimating as a 180-200lb swordfish. The following night was just a half night of fishing and we went 0 for 2. we did manage to get some hooks into a shark and we caught about a 3" sailfish so I guess you can say we had a billfish release. There was only one sword caught that night and they got him in the same depth we had our bites almost 40 miles away.

I wouldn't think that they would hold the same depth preference for such a long distance. Our swordfishing is really starting to take off up here. We have on a average of 4 to 5 bites a night so we are still getting things figured out and perfected.