The swordfish had been hooked at 11:30 [a.m.]... At seven-thirty I passed the rod to Captain Dan. He was as eager to take it as I was to give it, and he began to work on the swordfish. Big and powerful as [Dan] was, he could not subdue that swordfish. ... At nine-thirty he was tired. ...
''Let's both work on him,'' I suggested.
So, standing beside Dan, a little in front, I grasped the rod above where he held it, and heaved with him.
By nearly midnight (close to 12 hours after the fish had been hooked), the team had the fish near the boat when it began acting strangely.
''Say, I don't like this,'' said Dan. ''He's runnin' wild.''
... broadbill swordfish wake up and become fierce and dangerous after dark. This one certainly verified that theory. In the dark we could not tell where he was, whether he was close or near, whether he menaced us or not. Some of the splashes he made sounded angry and close. I expected to hear a crash at any moment. ... We took the chance that as long as our propeller turned the swordfish would not ram us.
But if we had only known what we were soon to learn, we might have spared ourselves further toil and dread.
The great fish began streaking line off the reel, then suddenly stopped, then pulled out more in jerky motions, then stopped again.
I could just make out the pale obscurity of heaving sea, wan and mysterious under the starlight. I heard splashes.
''Listen, Dan,'' I called. ''What do you make of that? He's on the surface.'' ... I heard more splashes, the angry swirl of water violently disturbed, the familiar swishing sound. Then followed a heavy thump. After that soft, light splashes came from the darkness here and there. I heard the rush of light bodies in the air. Then a skittering splash, right near the boat, showed us where a flying fish had ended his flight.
The line lay slack again, then came tight quickly and finally snapped.
Dan shouted: ''There! ... Do you know what that broadbill is doin' out there? He's feedin' on flyin' fish. He's got hungry an' thought he'd feed up a little. Never knew he was hooked! Eleven hours an' a half - an' he goes to feedin'! By gosh! If that ain't the limit!''
It was long after midnight when we reached [Catalina] Island. Quite a crowd of fishermen and others interested waited for us at the pier, and heard our story with disappointment and wonder. ... I shall always be positive of the enormous size of this broadbill, and that, after being fought for half a day, and while still hooked, he began chasing flying fish. -Tales of Swordfish and Tuna by Zane Grey, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1927.
Perhaps no single account better reveals how unique and remarkable a game fish Xiphias gladius is than does this one by the great angling pioneer, Zane Grey. But he's not alone. Another legendary name in big-game fishing, Kip Farrington (Fishing the Atlantic, 1949), tells of watching in disbelief as a 316-pound broadbill he'd fought for five hours started chasing down bonito! Of this ''great show,'' he writes, ''I had read about a Zane Grey fish doing that after an eleven-hour fight at Catalina on flying fish but never believed it until I saw it myself.''
Spend some time talking with experienced big-game anglers and reading pub accounts, and it quickly becomes evident that the broadbill swordfish is completely unlike any other apex predator that swims the world's oceans.
Gladiator with an Attitude
The Latin name for this fish is apt enough: This gladiator, like its namesake in the 2000 Ridley Scott film, is a hero who shall rise not just once, but every night to feed and, in the early mornings, to sun itself at the surface. And this gladiator, much like that other one, has one hell of an attitude.
That attitude wasn't lost on the earliest seafarers, whose ancient and often misguided depictions of the creature suggested a monster motivated by an unyielding malevolence. Such notions continued into the last century.
Writing in his 1903 book, Denizens of the Deep, Frank T. Bullen calls Xiphias a ''huge species of mackerel.'' Besides erring in taxonomy, Bullen describes the broadbill's amazingly long sword as a ''short, sturdy shaft of bone'' capable of penetrating 6 inches of solid oak. The author goes on to attribute to swordfish attacks on bowhead whales made ''with almost maniacal fury.'' Not only that, but this species commonly works cunningly with orcas to dispatch large whales! Bullen reports how swordfish take particular delight in killing porpoises. Although ''perfectly harmless to a fish like himself ... the native blood-thirst is awakened ... and in a moment he has launched himself at the flat black flank of a sea-pig, in which his sword buries itself up to his eyes nearly.''
But while ''experts'' like Bullen may have fostered misinformation around the turn of the century, real fishermen had real tales to tell of barely escaping with their lives after swordfish encounters.
''Swordfish Cuts Dory of Local Vessel in Two'' - that's one of many such headlines taken from accounts of Gloucester, Massachusetts, fishermen in the early 1900s as listed on the Web site Out of Gloucester (www.downtosea.com). The account reads: ''The ordinary routine of swordfishing carries with it hazards greater than any other line of work in the fishing industry, but when a 200-pound swordfish decides to attack a dory the chances of the fishermen coming out of the affray alive are very slim.''
Among the other accounts in headlines: ''Wounded Swordfish Turned on Pursuer'' (1926), ''Swordfish Pierced Dory'' (1902), ''Richard Platt of This Port May Lose Leg; Infuriated Fish Stabbed Him Through Bottom of Dory'' (1905).
''Swordfish are like no other game fish,'' says Scott Bannerot, author of The Cruiser's Handbook of Fishing (International Marine, 2000). Bannerot should know: He has caught many on sport gear and has handled close to 1,000 in some years during his stint as hydraulic leader cart operator on the F/V Rush out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. ''These fish move fluidly, more like a shark [than a marlin], and with a fearless, belligerent attitude, pectorals out, long, heavy bill menacing.
''A marlin bill is a toy compared to that of a swordfish,'' Bannerot says. ''I've witnessed on countless occasions struggling swordfish eyeball the leader or gaff man, then take deliberate, swinging, high-velocity shots at either the men or the boat with that tremendous bill, causing steel hulls to reverberate with an immense clang. These deliberate attacks transmit a raw, sheer anger, a ferocity, an aggressiveness not characteristic of other big-game fish, with the exception of sharks.''
World's Toughest Game Fish?
''Lassoing mountain lions, hunting the grizzly bear, and stalking the fierce tropical jaguar, former pastimes of ours, are hardly comparable to the pursuit of Xiphias gladius. It takes more time, patience, endurance, study, skill, nerve, and strength, not to mention money, of any game known to me ... .'' So wrote Zane Grey in his Tales of Swordfish and Tuna, citing the swordfish as ''the noblest warrior of all the sea fishes.'' Many anglers today who've caught giant bluefin and grander marlin agree.
''The swordfish offers the best fight of all fish,'' Capt. Julio Cota says without hesitation. A top marlin skipper out of Baja's East Cape on El Loco 2, Cota cites a broadbill heartbreaker that his boat battled for more than 24 hours; the 50-pound line gave out long before the swordfish.
''The fight of a 200-pound broadbill is like a combination of a tough 200-pound yellowfin tuna and a strong 400-pound blue marlin, with sensational jumps,'' says Ruben Jaen, a cardiovascular surgeon who lives in Caracas, Venezuela, and has fished billfish and tuna all over the world. He has caught more than 300 blue marlin, including a 1,056-pounder, and his total of swordfish caught and released runs well into three digits. Jaen rates the broadbill as ''the best-fighting game fish: strong, stubborn, difficult and dangerous to handle during the final moments. Besides that, you need the patience of a saint to hook one, and you must be in very good physical condition.''
While swordfish often fight in great depths, they may come roaring out of the water as well. Jaen recounts a 380-pounder that jumped 11 times, and Zane Grey writes of a swordfish hooked off Catalina Island that jumped 14 times, several leaps clearing the water.
''Swords often go ballistic on the surface, sometimes greyhounding for the horizon, other times leaping vertically and clearing the water completely. It's quite a sight on a full-moon night, especially when they're less than 30 feet from the boat,'' says Ray Douglas, a broadbill fanatic who owns King Sailfish Mounts in Pompano Beach, Florida. On a dark night, only a frantic lightstick rushing magically over the water gives away a swordfish's jumps, Douglas says.
What makes the broadbill such bad boys? For one thing, they can and do dive to great depths with thumb-numbing power. Hooked marlin seldom go so deep, and often it's to die and hang as great weights at the end of a line. Swordfish go deeper not to die, but to slug it out on their home turf. Yet they can and often do decide to rocket up to the surface, leaving an angler cranking for dear life to catch up with the line's belly.
Broadbill also derive their stubbornness from their namesake: Their very broad bills act like great planing surfaces, and they use them to full advantage. Writing in the South Africa saltwater anglers' magazine Ski-Boat (May 2000), Piet Joubert and Nic de Kock explain it this way: ''As a big Rapala pulls when dragged from above, so does the living giant Rapala - a broadbill - on one's line. This fish doesn't give up, and perpetually fights with its broad sword and head downwards, making it extremely difficult for the angler ... .''
Slashing Swords and Soft Mouths
The broadbill is the only species in the only genus in its family; it has no direct relatives. The most obvious characteristic distinguishing the broadbill from other billfish is its sword - not the narrow, tapered cone of marlin, but a true flat, swordlike rapier that is both surprisingly broad and long (more than half its body length).
While that sword can be a defensive weapon, it's more often used in day-to-day feeding. ''The swordfish is a strike-and-return feeder,'' says swordfish expert Ed Gaw at Hi-Liner Fishing Gear in Lighthouse Point, Florida, ''approaching a collection of bait in the shadow created by the light, slashing with its broad bill and returning to pursue the damaged or injured prey.''
Says conservationist Jim Chambers with Chambers and Associates in Kensington, Maryland, ''Since swords slash their prey to immobilize it, then circle back to eat it, their behavior makes them vulnerable to foul-hooking.''
Yet this billfish born with a mean streak has a surprisingly tender mouth compared with that of its spear-nosed kin. The swordfish's soft mouth has spawned divergent strategies on how best to strike and play a swordie. One school advises the angler to hit the fish as hard as he can to sink the hook in some bony spot somewhere so it will stay hooked, then crank down on the drag. If all you can get is some soft tissue, better to pull the hook at the outset than after many tough hours, the thinking goes. The other approach has the angler set up more easily and play the fish with a fairly light drag, figuring that even if the hook hasn't gained much purchase, it may be enough to stay connected if finessed.
Attack on a Submarine
Swordfish range from tropical to cool/temperate waters of oceans around the world - wherever surface temperatures are at least 55 degrees. Although the broadbill is considered a highly migratory species, its exact patterns of migration aren't fully understood. Some populations appear to remain relatively residential and migrate little.
Scientists - and fishermen - have long recognized the movement of larger fish, which are always females, north or (in southern oceans) south into waters rich in food, but too cold for smaller broadbill with less body mass. That explains why some of the largest broadbill are found off New England and the Canadian Maritimes or off New Zealand, for example, and why the all-tackle world-record 1,182-pounder came from the cool Pacific off Chile. These big mamas return briefly each year during winter months to join smaller males in warmer waters for spawning. Juveniles remain in warm tropical waters until large enough to thrive in cooler temperatures.
There's little doubt that swordfish dive deep to feed on squid and fish (and whatever else suits their fancy; seabirds have also been found in the stomachs of swordfish). How deep do swordfish dive? A swordfish attacked the submersible Alvin at 2,000 feet (the hapless fish was still there, having inextricably impaled itself, when the sub came to the surface). Deep-dropping anglers catch them in 1,000 to 2,000 feet, and they may feed in water deeper yet.
The ability of this predator to dive from the surface straight into water thousands of feet deep and swim back up again is astonishing. They must cope with enormous pressures at those depths, and while the surface temperature may be in the 60s or 70s, a deep dive may find swords feeding in water temperatures in the 40s or even upper 30s.
While such rapid temperature changes would immobilize most fish, swordfish, like deep-diving bluefin tuna and some sharks, have the ability to maintain their body temperatures. ''Some of their capillaries act as heat exchangers,'' Chambers says. ''That keeps their eyes and brains a lot sharper than those of their prey, so there's really no contest in the depths.'' That contest is further tipped in favor of the swordfish, thanks to an extraordinary organ in its head designed strictly to heat its huge eyes and keep its brain warm in the deep, dark, frigid waters where it hunts squid and fish.
Rechargeable Batteries
It's no coincidence that both swordfish and bluefin dive to great depths to feed and that both are traditional harpoon-fishing targets because they bask at the surface. They're there, says Chambers, to warm up and ''recharge their batteries'' after foraging in the icy depths. This accounts for the broadbill's habit of basking, or ''sleeping,'' at the surface, typically for an hour or more.
''We never see broadbill finning at the surface during the daytime,'' according to Erwin Bursik in South Africa, editor of Ski-Boat magazine. One explanation is that basking is probably most common in cold-water areas, where large females feed in deep water, and less frequent in tropical waters, where smaller swords feed shallower. Many swords in warmer areas make the same diurnal migration that their prey make, ascending near or to the warmer surface waters in the darkness to feed and then descending again toward morning; these fish have no need to warm up in the rising sun.
It's often possible to motor close to basking swords resting at the warm surface like a snake atop warm rock on a cold spring morning. Then, to the frustration of many an angler, it's usually much easier to stick them with a harpoon than to persuade them to eat. Basking swords typically aren't in a feeding mode and often turn down even live baits.
Harpooners aren't the sole threat to basking swordfish, however. Mako sharks are one of the few real predators that can and will take down a broadbill. And almost inevitably, the two species will occur in the same waters. These fastest of all sharks will typically go for a sword's tail in hopes of debilitating it in one lightning strike. Indeed, many anglers have had tired swordfish at or near the boat mauled by makos - sometimes with heartbreaking results since such attacks have disqualified potential International Game Fish Association world records.
Garry Cullen, manager of the famed Hemingway's fishing resort on the Kenya coast, recounts actually seeing a struggle between these predators. ''We witnessed an amazing battle between a big broadbill and a mako shark right on the surface in daylight,'' he says. ''After a lot of spray and blood, the mako emerged victorious and started to feed on the stricken broadbill.''
Scott Bannerot has watched makos dash in to bite off the tail of a spent swordfish on a longline, then come back around to ''bite off the front of its face, severing the bill'' - the first bite to immobilize the fish, the second ''to remove the dangerous weapon of a very formidable prey.''
A One-Ton Broadbill?
Swordfish are one of the ocean's largest top-level predators; the 1,182-pounder that Louis B. Marron caught off Chile in 1953 remains the all-tackle world record. But various reports - some from reliable sources and many questionable - suggest there are broadbill swimming the oceans that could make that grander a mere minnow. Charles Norman of Charles Norman Safaris in Johannesburg cites an account described to him by fellow South African Nic de Kock of Capetown, ''the man who 'discovered' South Africa's rich broadbill potential 20 years ago, when he'd make routine catch surveys of longline boats as part of his job with the Department of Sea Fisheries,'' Norman says.
De Kock told Norman that he'd seen in a training film made for bottom longliners a fish so enormous that, despite the poor quality of the video, he felt it had to be the mother of all broadbills.
''The fish was so huge that I set out to track down the circumstances,'' de Kock said. ''I found that it had been caught by one of the Sea Harvest boats about 200 kilometers [125 miles] northwest of Cape Town. Company records show it had to be cut into three portions to fit into cold storage, and when the pieces were weighed back in Cape Town five days later, they totaled 1,897 pounds. So with the stomach and body fluids, it would have been a genuine double grander.''
Night-Trolling for African Swords
The swordfish ''was a mythical catch for many years in these waters,'' says David Slater, a past Kenya charter owner and now fishing writer for Kenya's Daily Nation. The first swordfish from southern Kenya's now-famed Pemba Channel was taken on rod and reel at night from a drifting boat fishing squid behind a lightstick. Then, in the early 1990s, a revolution in technique proved how abundant swords are in these waters.
''A few skippers started to troll in the swordfish areas, using lightsticks on leaders and sometimes in the lures,'' Slater says. Word of their success spread around the world, fueled in part by Italian writer Alessandro Giangio, who visited Kenya and documented the technique in words and images.
Most broadbill anglers here now fish soft-head lures from outriggers, flat lines and downriggers at 4 to 5 knots for 15 or more strikes in an evening.
Kenya skippers generally keep all but critical running lights extinguished while night trolling. Skippers like Peter Ruysenaars at Kenya's Pemba Channel Fishing Club prefer to troll on the darkest of dark nights, eschewing the moonlight. Yet in other areas, such as off south Florida, anglers avoid new-moon periods and insist their best action comes on full-moon nights.
The Kenya fishery is typically on light tackle for swordfish that generally run 30 to 100 pounds or so, with most of the fish released. The Pemba Channel may produce 15 or more swordfish strikes in an evening. Capt. Richard Moller cites 24 strikes as his best night (in February 1999). Out of those, his anglers tagged and released 11 broadbill.
With so many small swords so abundant, Slater says, ''The next logical step was fly tackle.'' The technique was modified to tease the fish up, and in April 1998 local angler Jeremy Block landed the first swordfish ever on fly; the 54-pounder is still the world record on 20-pound tippet.
South Africa's swordfishery, pioneered by de Kock - who caught the country's first broadbill on sport-fishing gear - reached its peak in the early 1990s. During one tournament, 12 boats fishing three nights recorded 99 strikes, says Charles Norman, releasing 19 of 34 swordfish caught. Cape Town anglers drift-fish in the traditional way for broadbill, using weighted squid under balloons at depths of 60 to 250 feet. The South African record stands at 490 pounds, but reports of huge fish well in excess of that weight abound.
New Zealand: New Land of Promise for Swordfish
Just as Africa's sport fishery for swords began to take off nearly 15 years ago, so today is New Zealand suddenly evolving into the newest land of promise for broadbills. A surge in interest beginning late in the 1990s has escalated rapidly. Historically, Down Under broadbill were strictly the domain of commercial fishermen. Records from the famed Bay of Islands Swordfish Club show only 10 broadbill caught through 1988, according to Kiwi writer Bill Hall in the August 2001 issue of New Zealand Fishing News.
That all changed that same year, however, when drifting at night with Cyalume lightsticks replaced decades of trying to bait the rare broadbill sighted on top during the day. In that year alone, 17 swordfish were recorded at the club. And just this past season, swordie skippers added slow-trolling lightstick-lit lures or baits to their arsenal of techniques.
Toward the end of the past season, skippers like Geoff Stone (on the Major Tom II out of the Bay of Islands) were working to perfect daytime deep-dropping after reading of Ruben Jaen's swordfish success using this method. The majority of more than 100 swords Jaen has caught and released over La Guaira Bank were taken in daylight by deep-dropping baits near bottom in up to 1,500 feet of water.
Discoveries of more areas for swordfish and interest in this as a year-round fishery continue to generate excitement among Kiwi anglers. Hall labels the rough-and-tumble waters off the Three Kings, which lie 60 or so miles off the North Cape of the North Island, as ''fabulous new grounds'' for swordfish. He notes that many other productive banks have been located much closer to the North Cape as well.
As is true for most of the pelagics taken off New Zealand, swords here may run very large. Earlier this year, longliners fishing out of Gisborne - well to the south of Bay of Islands - brought in a dressed broadbill, which whole would have weighed between 1,350 and 1,400 pounds.
Writing in the August issue of New Zealand Fishing News, Matt Watson, deckie on the charter boat Prime Time, chronicles the great success they enjoyed during the 2001 season: They took up to three broadbill (some over 500 pounds) on some nights. This was the same season that Capt. Bruce Smith aboard Striker set a new 80-pound line-class record off the Three Kings with a 732-pounder. Look for more records to fall here in coming years.
South Florida: Cautious Optimism
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, sport fishermen out of Miami and Fort Lauderdale discovered a bonanza for swords, fishing at night just offshore. One of the country's hottest recreational fisheries on any coast blossomed as anglers began to tap into the substantial swordfish stocks. The fishery soon came to an end, fished out not by anglers after sport, but by commercial fishermen. Having heard of the great action, they wasted no time focusing their efforts on swordfish where there had been a minimal directed fishery previously. Within a few years, the commercial fleet had decimated the resource.
In recent years, sport fishermen have once again begun finding swords off south Florida, mostly smaller fish. But longliners can no longer target the swords here because this is part of the swordfish nursery area that the federal government has closed to longlining. As the night fishing off the bright lights of Miami and Fort Lauderdale gains steam, if anglers are release-minded and judicious about the fish they do keep for personal consumption, broadbill may hold promise for a reliable, long-term fishery for years to come.
Worldwide Commercial Pressure
Swordfish are sought commercially around the world in craft ranging from tiny wooden canoes such as those used in Ghana to large, state-of-the-art longliners from major Asian, European and North American nations that fish the world over. The world catch of swordfish had reached a record of nearly 90,000 tons by 1995, according to the most recent study from the National Marine Fisheries Service. In fact, the catch is surely higher still, since fishermen in many countries do not report their catches. Swordfish generate more than $100 million in export earnings. Three nations take about two-thirds of all swordfish caught in the world: Taiwan, Japan and Spain.
Traditionally, U.S. swordfisheries concentrated on the productive grounds off New England with highly selective harpoon fishing. With its limited take and complete lack of bycatch (inherent in longlines and devastating to marlin and shark stocks), harpooning did not threaten North Atlantic broadbill populations.
All that changed in the latter part of the 20th century when longliners began targeting swordfish, laying thousands of longlines each stretching up to 40 miles and each leaving thousands of baited hooks waiting to be swallowed by swords (and any other predator that found them). By 1995, nearly 2,000 U.S. vessels had commercial swordfish permits for the Atlantic, many of them active longliners.
California's broadbill fishery has followed a different path. Harpooning began here in the early 1900s, and as recently as 1980, 1,200 harpoon permits were issued. Today, fewer than 150 such permits remain, while a swordfish drift-net fishery has increased in scope. Still, harpooners remain active, many employing spotter planes in the summer months to search for the 300- to 500-pound swordfish they're able to harvest.
Farther west, in Hawaiian waters, longlining for swords skyrocketed from 37 vessels in 1987 to 164 in 1995. Recent environmental lawsuits have forced widespread area closures to protect sea turtles from longlines.
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas manages Atlantic swordfish stocks, although heavily influenced by commercial fishing interests. The commission has for years disregarded its own scientists' recommendations, allowing overfishing to pare stocks down to just 58 percent of the maximum sustainable yield. Moreover, some of ICCAT's 22 member nations have routinely ignored the very catch regulations to which they agreed. Other nonmember nations typically disregard ICCAT regulations. With no regulatory agency overseeing Pacific swordfish, laws for these stocks vary greatly, but their status is generally thought to be approaching fully fished.
South Africa reveals another instance of commercial overfishing decimating broadbill stocks. ''Commercial boats from around the world have moved in, and the plunder has continued unabated now for several years,'' says Charles Norman in Johannesburg. Although these boats still manage to bring in some huge fish, including a few granders, that may not last long. Foreign vessels have been receiving a 15,000-ton annual quota of South African broadbill, but Nic de Kock says that's the tip of the iceberg, compared with the take off the country's virtually unprotected coast by unlicensed vessels. ''It's total slaughter,'' he says. ''I've known one boat to take 30 tons of broadbill in three days. As the guy who initially attracted attention to the Cape's broadbill, I feel terrible about it.''
Even as the recreational broadbill fishery in New Zealand shows its world-class potential, Kiwis fret that swords in their productive waters will suffer the same fate as those in the North Atlantic. Over the past decade, as other fisheries came under increasing regulation, ''A domestic longline fleet began to build up, from no boats to about 200 now,'' according to Sam Mossman, special projects editor of New Zealand Fishing News and probably the country's best-known and most prolific sport-fishing writer. While most of these boats are supposedly targeting bluefin, Mossman says, ''Their catch of swordfish has skyrocketed [and] there is no restriction.''
Similar concerns are growing quickly in Australia, where the commercial longline fishery targeting broadbill is expanding rapidly. Despite the lessons to be learned from depleted North Atlantic stocks, quotas have yet to be set for broadbill.
Closer to home, concerns for eastern Pacific stocks range from drift gillnetting off Southern California to longlining off Baja and Mexico. ''Due to increased commercial pressure, notably around the Magdalena Bay area by Mexican longliners, numbers of swordfish in the Cabo San Lucas area have decreased dramatically in the last few years,'' says Capt. Pete Groesbeck, one of southern Baja's most respected veteran skippers.
