Daytime swordfishing is one of the most demanding games in offshore fishing, dropping baits a third of a mile straight down and waiting for a bite you may never feel. On a recent run out of the Florida Keys, the South Florida Fishing Channel teamed up with charter captain Matt of Marathon Sport Fishing aboard his 33-foot Ocean Master, the Falcon, determined not to stop until they boated a sword. They did not get there, but the trip was anything but dull.
The crew ran roughly 35 miles offshore to reach the deep water swordfish demand, then set about dropping baits some 1,800 feet down on a heavy electric reel. The technique hinges on a large buoy clipped to the line well above the weight, acting as a giant bobber so anglers can watch for a bite from a bait sitting in near-total darkness on the bottom.
That buoy carried its own story. The captain had lost it months earlier off Big Pine while swordfishing the deep edge, only for a friend, Sebastian, to find it floating off Key Largo a day later and return it. "What are the chances of a buoy getting lost here and getting found by your friend a day later?" the crew marvelled as they sent it back to work.
The deep drop quickly turned into a problem. By accident, the buoy was clipped to the wrong loop, putting the bait and weight even deeper than intended. Before long the buoy was pulled completely underwater, a sign of either a big fish or the bottom. It proved to be the latter: the rig snagged, and attempts to motor it free ended with the line parting and the entire buoy and bait setup lost to the ocean floor.
Down to a single rod, the crew leaned on the day's consolation prize. Trolling small skirted feathers under working birds, they picked up mahi, and found the fish would also take a squid pitched on the same feathers when they crowded the boat. A pod of around a hundred dolphins, the marine-mammal kind, surfed the wake, and a strangely deserted Norwegian cruise ship drifted past, oddities that summed up an unpredictable day on the water.
There was one genuine moment of swordfish drama. A sword came up and whacked the bait twice but never committed to the hook, leaving the crew agonisingly close. Rather than give up, they chose to stay an extra night with the captain, re-spool the lost electric reel at midnight, running new line through the line counter, and head back out the following day for another crack, a continuation they promised gets "nuts" in the next episode.
For all the gear lost and the sword that got away, the crew came home with mahi for tacos and a reminder of what daytime swordfishing really involves: long runs, deep drops, expensive tackle on the line and no guarantees. As they put it after losing the rig, sometimes you catch something big, and it is just the bottom of the ocean. The sword, for now, lives to fight another day.