Proposed Recreational Swordfish Regulations

(The minimum 47-inch lower jaw to fork limit remains in effect):

1) A limit of one swordfish per boat per trip: This recreational limit will apply to all vessels, including charter fishing boats.

2) Anglers must report within 24 hours all landings of swordfish except for those reported through fishing tournaments. All it will take is a 5-minute call to this toll-free number: 1-800-894-5528 to report the size, date and place of landing. This also applies to blue marlin, white marlin and sailfish catches.

3) NMFS plans to develop an outreach program to promote the use of circle hooks within the recreational swordfish fishery to avoid injury to the fish.

4) Recreational swordfish anglers are limited to handlines and rod and reel gear.

Livebait Rigging for Swordfish

Leader Construction: Tie Bimini twist in fishing line. Attach ball-bearing snap swivel using offshore swivel knot or other. Crimp loop to top of 10- to 30-foot, 300-pound-test mono leader; crimp 9/0 slightly offset J-hook to bottom (circles are also widely used). Hook luminous light stick handle onto snap swivel, securing loose end to leader with a rubber band. Connect 24- to 32-ounce breakaway sinker to swivel by wrapping copper rigging several times to secure it enough to stay on until fish strikes.

Bridle Rig Live Bait: Tie about a 4-inch loop of dacron or rigging thread. One end of loop goes around the hook and the other end goes through the open eye of rigging needle. Go through eye socket with rigging needle. Place that end of bridle over the hook; twist hook a few times and pass the tip of the hook through the open loop between the twist and the top of the baitfish's head. If you have too much slack, twist bridle hook a few more times and go through the bridle again.

Float Setup: Snap luminous light stick and place it inside balloon or inside half-gallon or gallon milk jug. Attach balloon to fishing line by tying a rubber band around the line so that it doesn't slip (run the rubber band through itself a couple of times and attach it to the end of balloon). Another good way is to inflate balloon and then wrap copper rigging wire around the end of the balloon. Then, attach wire to fishing line with a rubber band. You want the balloon to burst or break loose when the fish strikes. Milk jugs are also good when tied around the handle with copper rigging wire and then attached to the line with a rubber band.

Deployment: Let lines out, staggering balloons or milk jugs at desired distance. Put out sea anchor to get a better drift. Tie chumbag near stern. Drop fluorescent (or brighter halogen) light and let it float next to chumbag. Light will attract baitfish, especially tinker mackerel, as well as swords. Keeping boat lights on during drifts interferes with anglers being able to see floats, baitfish, fish or ships heading toward you. Once the balloons or jugs are out, place your fishing rod in the holder and back off the drag so that it will click off and let the fish pick up the bait and take line. When you hear the fish taking line, pick up the rod, tighten the drag and set the hook.

Swordfish: A Slice of History

The secret's out: Swordfish are indeed making a comeback. However, anglers should not forget the long and contentious regulatory history behind our only "eating" billfish.

Although it's hard to say when the alarm bell first sounded, surely conservation sentiments were stirring as early as 1983, when the last recreational swordfish tournament concluded off Fort Lauderdale with not a single fish landed-not even a bite. Five years before that, tournament records kept by the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) seemed to promise about a fifty-fifty shot at catching a swordfish on a given night, and some by-golly big ones at that: In 1978 a 590-pounder hit the scales, anchoring an average fleetwide catch of 161 pounds.

As a commercial longline fleet moved in during these years, recreational catches and enthusiasm went down the drain. A longline consist of dozens of miles of monofilament, supported at the surface by buoys, and trailing hundreds of hooks on short leaders. Logbooks kept by these commercial fishermen became the only formal records of a fishery in obvious decline. For many years, conservation advocates insisted the federal government needed to do a better job of regulating the fishery, but it wasn't until the close of the 1990s that the issue galvanized the public. In 1998, many chefs and restaurateurs started removing swordfish from their menus in an effort to draw attention to the dwindling stocks. A few outspoken longliners began leaving the business, appalled at watching future earnings and dead baby swordfish drift away together on the Gulf Stream. Bumper stickers even reminded us of the fact that most market swordfish never had chance to spawn.

Under pressure from virtually every marine conservation group-and stirred to action by bycatch and stock rebuilding provisions of the 1996 Congressional Sustainable Fisheries Act-the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) finally took action. Effective February 1, 2001, longline fishing was outlawed year-round in waters along Florida's East Coast out to 200 miles, and in the DeSoto Canyon area of the Gulf of Mexico; a seasonal closure was also applied to an area off South Carolina. The closures are anticipated to reduce 31 percent of dead discards of juvenile swordfish in the pelagic longline fishery. Conservationists also expect the closures will benefit sailfish, which were often incidentally hooked on longlines, and then cut loose hours later, dying if not dead already from the trauma.

The longline closed areas remain open to rod-and-reel fishermen, and, while the fishery is not out of the woods yet, it is in recovery, according to NMFS. Now that longliners are banned, recreational anglers are poised to do their part to ensure that the fishery recovers to the days when the average swordfish weighed 200 pounds instead of 60 to 90 pounds today. While it is certainly acceptable to keep a fish within the limits, a number of South Florida charterboat captains like Bouncer Smith and Ray Rosher have been releasing swords. Sadly, rumors of unscrupulous, unlicensed anglers selling swordfish to restaurants prompted NMFS regulators to draft tight restrictions, including a one fish per boat limit, which many feel is too conservative-especially in light of the U.S. annual quota issued by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. The ICCAT is a multi-national treaty organization that sets catch levels of highly migratory species for member nations

Recently, the National Coalition for Marine Conservation, American Sportfishing Association, IGFA, Recreational Fishing Alliance and National Fishing Association co-signed a letter to the chief of the NMFS Highly Migratory Species Division asserting the right of recreational fishers to land swordfish within the overall U.S. quota. The letter also underscored the likelihood that rod-and-reel catches will be more sustainable than the nonselective longlines.

Surprised by allegations (likely from disgruntled ex-longliners) that South Florida anglers had been "slaughtering hundreds of swordfish" every week, Mike Leech, president of IGFA and as well-connected to the regional sportfishing scene as anyone, conducted an informal survey of recent recreational catches.

Leech found that about 50 boats are fishing swordfish on a regular basis off Broward and Dade counties. "I've never seen more than 18 on a single night," he said. "Most boats are drifting a strip 20 miles long and 2 to 4 miles wide, an area of humps, bumps and ridges, and if you get to the north end and want to run back, you can easily count all the boats by their lights.

"Out of that fleet, maybe 500 swordfish were caught in all of 2001," he said. "Over half of those fish were released, which means about 250 swordfish were boated in South Florida last year. The average size boated was 118 pounds."

Doing a little figuring, Leech concluded that recreational landings in South Florida are accounting for just one-half of one percent of the total annual U.S. swordfish quota-making federal efforts to restrict the fishery seem trivial at best. "You also don't have the bycatch problem in this fishery-this is something NMFS should be encouraging," he said, adding that longlines outside the closed areas continue to take over 90 percent of the swords allocated to the U.S. by ICCAT.

"The good news is that there are a lot of fish out there," Leech said of South Florida waters. "I'll be continuing to monitor it, and I expect the average size will get bigger."

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