Fishing Report

Filling in for Captain Q on the "Get Lit" a 53 foot Viking, I ran the boat for the tournament and had the chance to fish with my good friends out of Miami, Kit Toomey, Peter Miller, Kelley, and John Cooper. We ran the boat down from Miami on Friday the night of the tournament. Kelley and I stopped for bait on the local bait patch to catch some live blue runners ( a swordfish favorite ). After catching 30 good size baits we made the 1 1/2 hour run to Islamorada so we could check in by 5:00 p.m. for the Islamorada Swordfish tournament. The rules of the tournament were based on a point system. 100 points for a swordfish release and a point for every pound if the fish was brought in to be weighed. In order to take a fish in to be weighed it must be 60 inches from the lower jaw to the fork of the tail. A fish this size is usually approxitmatley 100 lbs. If two boats have the same amount of points, then the winner goes to the boat that scored the points first. If a boat releases a fish they must take a digital picture of that fish and call it in on the VHF radio to the committee boat. The committee boat will then issue you a confirmation number.

There are alot of different areas to Swordfish in the Florida Keys. Sometimes it is hard to make a decision on which area to fish. You may travel 30 miles to the south and catch nothing but sharks, or you can head north where there are no sharks and possibly no swordfish. 3 years ago I fished the Islamorada Swordfish tournament on the same boat with the same crew. We headed south the first night and caught 5 swordfish and 1 mako shark. We weighed one swordfish at 143 lbs. After the first night we were in first place. The second and final night we went back to the same spot. Ended up catching 11 sharks, no swordfish. What a bummer! We took second place in the tournament and were very happy. Our crew had hooked 6 swords and caught 5 of them, and incredible hookup ratio.

 After that tournament, it just makes you roll the dice on where your gonna fish. North or south? The depths are usually the same 1200 to 1800 ft. which is the last steepest shelf off of the coast. We made the decision to fish north on this tournament because my fishing friends that fish south mostly said they were getting nothing but sharks. Two of my friends from Key Largo had fished north and had reported having swordfish bites but not catching anything. That was good enough for me as long as there were no SHARKS! After letting out our 3 ballon lines at 8:30 p.m.(lines allowed to be in the water at 8:00 p.m.) from the back of the boat we turned the boat side to the sea and walked the rods up to the rod holders on the bow. As soon as we placed the rods in the holders, the first one started screaming. We were already hooked up. The crew cleared what lines we needed to, trying to leave as many as we could out for a possible second bite. Peter walked the rod to the back of the boat where it was easier to fight the fish than on the bow. About an hour into the fight we hooked a second fish. Kelley fought that fish for about half an hour and we released it, approxitmatley a 55 lb. swordfish. Peter's fish took a little longer. After 2 hours we had a 150 lb. swordfish along side the boat. We took pictures of the fish and decided to release it. Our team was in first place after the first night, but unfortunately we weren't able to catch a fish the second night and were beaten out by one fish from the "Jichi". We took second place in the tournament and were pleased that we managed to catch those two fish the first night.