July 25-27, 2018
Trip 3 of the season. Scott, Larry Duggan, Larry Fincher and I went out for a 4 day trip. Thankfully, the boat had no problems this trip. Started fishing humps at the West Flower Gardens about 6:15am on Friday morning. Snapper were mostly in the 10-15 lb class and we had our limits by 7:30, along with two grouper and an 8lb Blackfin Snapper. Headed over to a secret spot to try for swordfish. On the first drop, had an immediate bump, followed by a couple of more taps before coming tight. It took 30 minutes to get it up from 1500′ down and it turned out to be a 48″ sword. Larry Duggan landed it using his Shimano electric reel. We were all pretty excited since this was the first sword ever hooked or landed on the boat.
After dressing the first fish and putting it in the cooler, we dropped a second time and again had an immediate bite, thought we hooked up, but ended up coming unhooked after a few seconds. We replaced the bait and dropped a third time. Again we had an immediate bite and the line came tight on the second bump. Scott got on the rod, and spent an hour fighting this fish. It was not an easy fight… the reel was loose on the rod handle, and kept overheating and shutting down. Once the fish was about 150′ below the boat, Scott could not make any progress. After consulting with Scott on what I thought we needed to do, we tried “planing” the fish. We would pull forward about a hundred yards, losing line most of the way, then put the boat in reverse and back down on the fish as fast as Scott could crank. Every time we did it, the line counter on the reel would show that we had made about 50′ of progress. After planning the fish up several times we finally got it to the boat. It was far too heavy to lift over the side so we had to drag it through the transom door. This one was 74″ long, with an estimated weight of 200lbs. After dressing this fish and putting it in the cooler, we had no room left in the coolers so we spent the rest of the day trolling over to the butterfly. The only hit we had was one barracuda. We decided to head back a day early, and arrived at the dock about 8:30 Saturday morning.
After a trip like this, the frozen margaritas were especially tasty…
Till the next trip,
Capt. Stout