Swords And Mahis

Report Date: September 20, 2018

As predicted the sword bite is getting very good and the mahi bite has remained very strong this month. The mahis bit all summer long and it has been better than average and I would say its been pretty good. For the past few years as we move into September, the mahi bite remains strong and this year is no exception. The best part about this September is that almost all the mahis being caught are either heavy lifter (5 – 10 pounds), gaffers 10 – 25 pounds) or slammers (30 plus pounds). For the most part the small, just legal size schoolies are gone and now almost all the mahis are decent size. We ran across a floating tree trunk on the way out to the sword grounds and caught 10 mahis between 10 and 30 pounds. It’s good to see these bigger fish pushing through our area. Last year the mahis stuck around into October so hopefully we will see the same this year.

The sword bite has been decent as well. There have still been some slow days, but there are more good days than slow days and as we get into October I truly believe that we will have a great swordfish bite this fall. We started out by doing a couple of night trips for swords. With as many boats fishing for swordfish during the day, it seems that the night swordfish fishing is a lost art as nobody seems to go anymore at night. Our first trip last week was the trip we ran across the mahis on the tree trunk, but unfortunately we never did catch a swordfish that night. At least we caught plenty of mahis for everyone. We did catch a big hammerhead shark at the end of the night as well. Two days later we had another evening sword trip and we did better on that trip. I had just put out all the baits (3 jug rods and 2 tip rods) and started explain to our customers on what to expect and what the bite looks like on the rods. I explained the jug rods (baits suspended under floats at different depths and drifted out) and what to look for and just as I started telling them what to look for in the tip rods (baits fished straight under the boat), the back deep tip rod bounced once and then loaded up. Dr. Manny got into position and fought the fish. I knew right away that it was a swordfish by the way it fought. It bit the bait, which was 300 feet down, and we fought it to about 100 feet and it dove back to 300 feet. This happened a few times until we were able to coax the fish close enough to harvest it. Although it was not a huge swordfish, it fought so much harder than the daytime swordfish do and it was strictly on a manual reel (no electric). We had one other bite that night which turned out to be a shark.
The daytime sword bite has also picked up (we had three bites in an hour and half two days ago) and the bigger swordfish are starting to push through.

This month and next are probably the best two months of the year. November can be stellar to as long as the weather cooperates. The good news is that in November the sailfish bite also picks up so if it’s too choppy to go into the Gulfstream for swordfish, you can kite fish on the edge for sailfish. It's a win win situation.
With that said, now is the time to book those sword trips and the sailfish trips. There is even some time left to go catch some mahis!

Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos

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