October 1st and 2nd Swordfish Report!

We had Brian Gilbert from Maryland on the BNM this weekend for a couple of days of Daytime Swordfishing. It was one fish he had never caught and I told him if we had a couple days to try I was fairly confident we could put him on a fish. We left Saturday morning and caught some bonitos on the way out for bait and then put out a high speed lure. We were running along at 16 knots when all of a sudden we heard the drag screaming. I slowed the boat down and 5 minutes later Brian had a decent wahoo in the boat. Not a bad way to start. We eventually made it to the sword grounds and made our first drift, but no bite. We reset and had a bite fairly quick, but missed it. The next drift we hooked up and Brian got in the chair. After 20 minutes we had the leader on the reel, about 50 feet away from the fish, but all of a sudden the fish panicked and shook lose. If there's one thing a swordfish knows how to do, It's to get unhooked! We reset and got a bait back on the bottom. A few minutes later Brian was back in the chair. After an hour, up and down, we sink the gaffs into Brian's first Broadbill! It was a nice healthy fish that weighed 148 lbs! Congrats! We call it a day and head home soon after. After weighing the fish we clean it up and send Brian with a bag of fresh swordfish for dinner. He said it was great and couldn't wait to eat some more with his family and friends when he got home. The next morning we leave early and hit the same spot. We had quite a few bites, but unfortunately we couldn't keep a hook in any of them. It just wasn't meant to be. We consider swordfishing "Big Game Fishing" and you have to take the good with the bad. All in all though it was still a great Florida Keys Fishing trip and Brian caught a beautiful fish.