Swordfishing in the Pacific

A Diversion of the tuna club at Avalon

FRANK GRAY GRISWOLD

THE swordfish of the Pacific is the same Xiphia sgladius so well known in the Atlantic Ocean. Several thousand of these fish are captured every season during July and August along our coast from Block Island to Halifax, N. S.

The average weight of the swordfish shipped to the Boston market is about 360 pounds, and there is a legend among the fishermen that a fish was once brought in that weighed 750 pounds.

The U. S. Fisheries Commission have never been able to find out where these fish breed. No very small fish have ever been taken along our coast although the Commission did capture a 25 pounder on one occasion. It is known that the fish breed in the Mediterranean, but as they appear there at the same season of the year that they do here this would hardly apply to the fish in our waters.

WORDFISHING with a rod and reel has become a sport, and an arduous one, on the Pacific especially, for the members of the Tuna Club at Avalon.

The first fish was taken in 1913 since which time eighteen fish have been brought in and weighed that averaged 298 2/5 pounds. The heaviest qualified fish—before the taking of the fish shown on this page—weighed 362 pounds and the smallest 130 pounds.

Regulation Tuna Club tackle is used—a sixteen-ounce tip five feet or more long and 1,200 feet or more of 24-thread line. The leader is made of strong piano wire doubled. Two sixfoot wires are strung from the hook to a oneinch ring and two wires of the same length join this ring to another one onto which the line is bent. The rings are for the glove-handed boatman to hold on to when he gaffs the fish. Some fishermen use a chain on the hook and a swivel in place of the middle ring but they are not quite trustworthy.

Mr. Boschen, the strongest and most skillful fisherman in the Tuna Club, has fished for swordfish daily from June 1st to October for three years. He has fought some forty odd fish and has landed but eight. He has battled with them for five, eight and even eleven hours and a half through the night. He tells me they really do not wake up until it grows dark. He fought one fish for eleven hours. The fish sounded fortyeight times and had to be pumped up and led the launch for a distance of twenty-nine miles before he was—most regrettably—lost.

THE Farnum brothers of moving picture fame, both strong men, fought a broadbill for eleven hours. One of them wore a harness made of webbing. The harness broke and he not only lost the fish, but the rod, line and reel as well, for the fish took them .with him. One of the brothers succeeded later in capturing a fish, much to everyone's satisfaction.

WHEN I arrived at Santa Catalina Island I found that the kind secretary of the Tuna Club had engaged a 28-foot launch for me to fish in and told me that there were no marlin or tuna about, which was a great disappointment.

The boatman, "Shorty" by nickname, hailed originally from Harlem. As we were both Gothamites we understood one another at once for we spoke the same language.

We started out at 8 a. m. the first day after my arrival at Avalon and had been fishing about two hours when "Shorty" said: "Here is a broadbill and he is a buster; will you try him?" The local names for the swordfish are broadbill or flatbill to distinguish him from the marlin whose bill is round. I found that we were four miles off shore and that "Shorty" had been instructed to put me on to a big swordfish, and he did it with a vengeance.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the dorsal fin of a large fish moving slowly near by and his tail, which was partly above the surface, seemed to be at least six feet from the dorsal fin. He was moving through the water leaving no wake behind him such as a shark does, and making no use of his tail; this he is enabled to do owing to the great power of his pectoral fins.

The launch was slowed down. I had a flying-fish on the hook and let out 150 feet of line. The boatman now tried to maneuver the boat in such a manner that the bait would swing in front of and near the fish. This was difficult as the swordfish was turning the same way we were, seeming unwilling to cross our wake.

At last he saw the bait and as the fish sank the launch was stopped. He disappeared without a motion or the least flirt of the tail. The balance of these fish is perfection.

"Shorty" said: "He is now going down to give it the once over; turn everything loose and give him plenty of line." The line was jarred as the fish struck the bait a hard blow and then it began to run out slowly. I gave him about two hundred feet and when the line became taut struck hard. I knew then that I had hooked my first swordfish!

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HE made a run of about two hundred yards and then sounded about six hundred feet, stayed down a few moments and allowed himself to be pumped up. He then came up to the surface and thrashed about in a circle, sounded again, was pumped up again. He did this several times. Within the first hour I had the double line, which was doubled back fifteen feet, on the reel three times and the wire leader was above the surface. We could see the fish plainly and "Shorty" said he would weigh over 500 pounds, but fish always look big under those circumstances and I was too busy to estimate weights. One thing I had discovered: he was too heavy for me. for in some of his sudden plunges he had nearly pulled me overboard. For the first time in my life I wished I weighed two hundred instead of one hundred and thirty pounds.

Suddenly the fish made a dive under the boat. I turned everything loose and shoved the rod six feet into the sea. The fish came to the surface on the other side of the boat as "Shorty" started the launch ahead and the line cleared.

This woke Senor Espada up and he raised Cain for two hours. He tried every fish trick known and jumped clear of the surface so that I could not help getting a good look at him. He was a very big fish; his sword looked five feet long to me, but everything in me had been stretched by this time, even my eyesight and imagination.

It had been a cold foggy morning. I had on two sweaters. First one then the other had been peeled off. Then my collar and my hat had been thrown aside. "Shorty" remarked about this time that if I kept on I would be naked before the -fish was taken.

I FOUGHT the fish for all I was worth for four hours and twenty minutes, then brought him to the boat on his side. I had most of the double line on the reel and four feet of the leader out of the water. I called to "Shorty" to put the gaff into him. Just then the fish gave a last struggle and went under the boat and the line fouled on the upper end of the shoe that protects the propellor. The fish still on his side was under the boat in plain view but beyond the reach of

the boatman's gaff and held securely by the fouled line.

I slacked my line to sec if the boatman could clear it with the gaff. The bag of the slack line drifted under the boat. "Shorty" caught it with the gaff and cut it with his knife, then cut the line on the rod side of the boat, knotted the two ends, and told me to reel in. I reeled in twenty-five feet or so of loose line and found he had cut the fish loose for he had knotted the wrong end and had thrown the fish end overboard. I thought much but said nothing!

I PUT my rod down with relief mingled with disgust and looked over the side of the boat at the swordfish. He slowly revived a little, struggled, pulled the end of the line free and sank.

I had been very tired at the end of the first hour but had my second wind and was going strong at the finish.

I was a pretty stiff fisherman the following day. Trying to make the fish take the bait and the moments that passed after the fish faded away beneath the surface and until he was hooked were moments of great excitement, but the rest of the time had been too hard work to call it unadulterated pleasure.

THERE were members of the Tuna Club at Avalon who had fished for forty, yes, fifty days and had not persuaded a fish to take the bait, and I had hooked one before I had been fishing two hours. They called that good luck but I did not feel that way at the moment, yet I revived quickly.

A few days later I hooked another large fish, pumped and hauled him for three hours, and broke my rod at the butt. The boatman spliced the rod while I held the tired fish with the tip. I then brought the fish alongside in twenty minutes more quite ready to gaff. The boatman had the leader in one hand and the gaff in the other when the leader caught between the brass cap of the exhaust, which was not screwed home, and the side of the boat. The hook straightened out and the fish sank. The hook had been in the corner of his hard mouth.

Swordfish were very plentiful this summer for the first time. I counted and fished for nine one morning not five miles from Avalon. Some days they seem very shy and will not look at any bait. It is the custom to try a barracouta for bait if they refuse the flying-fish, and if they do not take that an albacore may entice them. They have been known—in the experience of trustworthy sportsmen—to take an albacore weighing twenty-four pounds.

After ten days' fishing for broadbills I left for Clemente, to look for marlin, where I remained three days and on my return had five more days with the swordfish.

The sea was like glass most mornings so that the fish could be seen at a great distance.

In the last five days I tried about twenty-five broadbills but only hooked one. The others would either cut the bait off the hook or else pay no attention to it but swim off and come to the surface one hundred yards or more away, where we would follow and try again. We often wasted two hours after one fish in this manner. If the fish are not hungry this treatment seems to bore them for they will jump out clumsily four or five times.

I PLAYED the third fish four hours and forty minutes, "Shorty" taking the rod for a short time to allow him to feel the weight of the fish. When the fish seemed to be leading nicely the hook pulled out. I am sure he was foul-hooked in his thin-skinned body for I could feel the hook slip from time to time. After the first hour he jumped at least ten feet into the air showing plainly his broad back, which looked as wide as the bottom of a canoe. He then ran out six hundred feet of line and fought on the surface. This amused the dog, Pard, greatly.

It is difficult to persuade a broadbill to bite and still more difficult to hook him, and if he, is a big one, still more difficult to do anything with him after he is hooked.

HE is a much more interesting fish to fight than the large tuna for he is a better general and no two fish seem to fight alike. There is an appearance of sameness about tuna fishing that does not at all exist in swordfishing.

It would be quite impossible to kill these fish without the modern reel with its heavy drag; thumb pressure alone could not do it, the fish are too strong.

This fishing was a lesson to me in what fishing tackle will stand. I did not think it possible that a split bamboo rod and a 24-thrcad line could stand such a strain.