Off Miami, the bold pursue giant swordfish by night
Summertime, and the fishing is easy. Unless the quarry is the broadbill swordfish, one of the strongest, most aggressive and highly prized trophies in the sea. New discoveries about the swordfish's feeding and fighting habits have resulted in record catches in the Gulf Stream, off the Florida coast. TIME Miami Bureau Chief Richard Woodbury joined a group of swordfishermen in pursuit of the broadbill. His report:
Precisely at 7 o'clock on a muggy, mosquito-filled evening, we pushed off from a south Miami marina and sped east into the open Atlantic, heading for the deepest reaches of the Gulf Stream. Our skipper was Pete Peacock, 41, a contractor by trade but a fisherman by avocation, one of the best in the Miami area. If anyone could find the big broadbill, it was Peacock. Two other fishing boats tagged along in convoy as we tore out of the Cape Florida Channel at 30 m.p.h. The CB radio crackled with reports of battles near by: a 300-pounder landed off Fort Lauderdale ... a three-hour fight in progress with a gargantuan swordfish off Key Largo.
After nearly an hour, Peacock cut the twin Mercuries. "This is the spot!" he called. We floated noiselessly on a dusky patch of sea. The jagged line on the Fathometer confirmed that we were in the swordfish's favorite haunt, a 1,100-ft.-deep stretch of the bathtub-warm Gulf Stream. Broadbills normally stay hundreds of feet down—one reason they are so hard to catch—but in the early '70s, Cuban refugee fishermen discovered that these fish rose from the depths at night, apparently to feed on squid that in turn were feeding on microscopic plankton drifting in the cooling sea. In the past two years some 400 swordfish have been landed off lower Florida, including several world-record broadbills weighing more than 600 lbs. Top fishermen from around the country now fly down to Miami to try their luck and the new techniques.
The swordfish remains a tough fish to catch. The broadbill has a surprisingly soft mouth, for all his size, which makes setting a hook firmly as much a matter of luck as skill. Many a fisherman has struggled for hours with a swordfish, only to have its tender mouth give way and the line come in empty. Still, when conditions are right—a full moon and a fast, nimble boat—swordfishing can pay off. Unlike his billfish cousins, the marlin and sailfish, the swordfish is edible, and a sale at dockside can more than compensate for the expense of a night's sportfishing.
As night closed in, we set out our lines, staggered at depths ranging from 50 ft. to 250 ft. On the leaders near the squid used for bait we attached Cyalumes, plastic cylinders containing a glowing green chemical. The deep-dwelling swordfish has evolved eyes as big as silver dollars, and the Cyalume lights up the squid to attract the foraging broadbill.
We hooked the lines to towering outriggers and began a slow drift that would take us 30 miles north before dawn. The once deserted sea suddenly seemed like a freeway at rush hour. Huge tankers glided out of the night, quiet as cats. Flickering orange lights marked the miles-long strands of line set by commercial fishermen. A minicity blossomed around us —the lights of other fishing boats, and perhaps a marijuana smuggler or two.