10-11-11 Daytime Swordfish Action!

We had Dimas, Felix, Paul, and Billy out on the BNM today for a daytime swordfish charter. On the first drop we hooked up. I thought we had a decent sized sword probably foul hooked and after an hour we had the fish on the leader. Unfortunately it was a 175 lb cuban night shark (or day shark). We were all disappointed, especially Felix who sweated for over an hour. We dropped again and had a swordfish bite but we missed him. It was now after lunch time and I knew we needed a sword. I ran south about 4 miles and sent down a fresh bait. After 20 minutes of drifting I decided to walk from the helm back to the fishing rod and check for bottom. I started dropping the bait, but something wasn't right. A sword grabbed it on the way down. Matt ran to the throttles and put the boat ahead and I got tight on the fish. He was racing to the surface and broke the concrete weight off instantly. Dimas got in the chair and went to work. After 40 minutes we had a nice broadbill swordfish 10 feet away, unfortunately the harpoon shot was a poor one and angered the fish. She dove back down 800' and didn't want to budge. I don't blame her because this fish was going to be dinner! After 2 hours Dimas was about to give up and finally got the fish back on the leader. A few minutes later we sank the gaffs into a beautiful 230# swordfish. CONGRATS! We made one more drop after that and within 10 minutes we were tight again. Felix wanted to redeem himself after his shark encounter and 20 minutes later he had his first ever swordfish catch. It was a juvinile sword around 20#'s. We took a couple quick pix and got the fish back in the water to fight another day. Yesterday all the boats that fished offshore had their limit of dolphin as well as quite a few blackfins. Not too bad for the second week of October! Today the dolphin thinned out but the blackfin tunas were still around. Come on down for some Florida Keys Fishing while it's still HOT!