I soloed an 11 foot swordfish from my 17 foot boat

I first saw the swordfish at 7:50 in the morning, about 12 miles out. He was 50 yards away, swimming erratically and slowly. He was so big that I was a little afraid of him at first. I estimated he was over 10 feet long.

When I saw him I was on my way to a spot 20 miles from Dana Point, California, where I had seen a swordfish the previous weekend

It was July 26, 1980 and my goal was to catch a swordfish while fishing alone in my 17-foot Boston Whaler. This was my sixth serious attempt to find and catch a swordfish alone. I am a physical therapist and a weekend fisherman. I have a small boat because I can’t afford a big one

As a kid I used to catch bonito in a skiff on Redondo Beach, California, pretending I was Ernest Hemingway fighting a marlin. I dreamed of doing something big in ocean fishing.

Every experienced angler in Newport Beach who talked to me about swordfish told me they had never heard of anyone catching a swordfish alone from a small boat. I don’t think any of them thought I could do it.

But there I stood, all alone, staring at a specimen standing right in front of me.

I put my outboard motor in neutral and prepared to offer the fish a bait. I told myself to relax and do everything methodically and correctly, but I felt myself getting excited. I picked up the octopus I had bought the night before and I got a little angry when I felt it and saw that it was still half frozen. I held it in the water and kneaded it to break the ice and make it more pliable.

I had sewn a hook into the squid the night before, so I attached the squid to the leader and put on my battle belt. I laid the squid over the side and let out about 60 feet of line.

I put the engine in gear and slowly moved the boat to get the octopus behind me, keeping an eye on the fish all the time. The sight of its black dorsal fin and tail on that gray morning was quite scary. It was still swimming erratically, slowly. I remember thinking at the time that it looked like someone searching for a lost contact lens.

I held the rod in my left hand and steered the boat with my right hand. I made a slight left turn to place the bait about 10 feet from the fish, and gave the bait a short, jigging action.

The swordfish slowly turned to the left, away from the squid. So I went around him again and presented the bait again. This time, from 20 feet away, he turned. When he saw it, his fins stiffened. Then he picked up speed and went under.

I jigged the squid twice. The swordfish hit the squid with its beak. Even with the reel on free spool, I could feel its incredible power going all the way up the line toward me. Then, two more strikes five seconds apart. The line started to go out. I could see the squid was in its mouth.

He wasn’t swimming fast, just steadily. I took my fighting harness out of my sports bag, put it on and clipped it to the reel.

The fish swam away steadily. About 45 seconds later I thought it was now or never. I knelt down because I was afraid he would pull me over the edge if I set the hook, and I wanted to hit the rail first. At that moment I felt a little scared. I had never caught a swordfish before and I didn’t know what it would be like if I set the hook.

I put my 9/0 reel in gear and hit the fish three times, as hard as I could. The hook felt solid. What do I do now, I wondered. I thought about stories I’d heard of long fights with swordfish—39 hours, 22 hours, 13 hours. And they were fought by men on big boats who had help.

I didn’t have a deckhand to point my fighting chair at the fish, another to hold the gaff, or a skipper to steer the boat. But I had good gear and I was mentally prepared. Still, I was scared.

In the summer of 1978, I caught a 192-pound striped marlin while fishing alone six miles off the east side of Catalina. But anyone who has ever caught a swordfish will tell you that if you multiply a tough fight with a big marlin by 10, you have a rough idea of ​​how tough a swordfish is.

Catching a swordfish is difficult under any circumstances. I know guys who have been fishing for swordfish for years and have never had a bite. Even if you find one that sheds fins, the chances of it going for your squid are well under 10 percent.

I thought the swordfish would run like a train when I struck, but he just kept swimming steadily. He never slowed down.

I had 620 yards of 80-pound-test Dacron line behind 15 feet of monofilament leader and 15 feet of double Dacron line. I tried to reel it in. It was easy. Why is this so easy, I wondered. Then it hit me: The swordfish doesn’t know he’s on the hook! I remembered stories of swordfish sitting on the hook for four hours and then suddenly starting to feed on mackerel.

He went down and swam around the boat once. Then he came up and shook his head three times. He was beautiful! He looked lit up, a purple-blue fluorescence.

Now he knows he’s addicted, I thought. And boy did he take off! He pulled out 300 yards of line and it screamed. The heat on the reel was unreal. He was going so fast the harness made it hard for me to breathe.

That was 30 minutes after I hooked him. I turned on my radio with one hand and said, “This is the boat ‘Lundy Tours.’ Are there any boats nearby?” No answer. Then I got worried that there was no one within 20 miles. I called every 10 minutes for a while. Finally I got an answer from a boat called the “Lovely Doll.”

“What can I do for you?” asked a man.

I said, “My name is Larry. I’m on a seventeen-foot boat by myself and I hooked a swordfish.”

“Are you sure it’s a swordfish?” the man asked.

“That’s a confirmation,” I said

“Are you sure it’s not a shark?”

“That is affirmative.”

“Okay, we’ll come get you. I have a big boat and a fighting chair. You can get in my boat.”

“No, I don’t want to change boats. I want to do it in my boat. I just want to keep in touch with someone, that’s all.”

Soon the news went all over the ocean. Many people were talking about it on the radio. I relaxed for the first time and thought: Hey, it’s me, here alone with a big fish, a big ocean and my little boat. Am I dreaming this? What a great feeling! All those people on the radio were rooting for me.

The next 26 hours were a tug of war. The star-shaped drag of the reel got so hot I couldn’t touch it. A few times the fish came to the boat and I had to reel it in quickly. Or it was north of me and suddenly went south and turned the boat 180°. That happened five times. I turned the engine off, but during the long battle I turned it on twice and let it run to charge the battery.

I changed positions, alternating between my fighting chair in the bow and the bench by the helm. I noticed that when I was in the chair, the boat moved in the direction the swordfish was going. I wanted him to pull the boat sideways so he would get tired.

It was difficult to maneuver between the chair and the bench. When I did, I put the reel in neutral. I felt that if I left the reel in gear, there was a chance that the fish would pull me over the rail of the boat and into the sea.

After 2 1/2 hours the fish started coming out with some really big waves. At that point I felt really tired in my hands, forearms, shoulders and back.

Now came my worst moments. The fish was smoking and I had to get into the fighting chair. I jammed the rod into the gimbal of the chair (a metal cup that the rod fits into) and the gimbal fell off. The propeller that held it to the chair had come out and fallen through the deck. I pulled up the hatch cover and could see the propeller but I couldn’t reach it. By rocking the boat I made the propeller roll to where I could grab it.

I decided I couldn’t catch that swordfish without fixing the chair. As far as I knew at the time, I would have to fight the fish for 18 hours. So I grabbed a screwdriver from the dash and fixed the gimbal with one hand.

I was pretty confident, so when I sat in the chair I decided to get aggressive. It was almost 11 in the morning and I knew the wind would be blowing out to sea in an hour. I got competitive and went one-on-one with that fish.

The fish had about 300 meters of line out when I started pumping. I slowly reeled in for half an hour. The fish came closer and the double line came out of the water. I was excited, but I half expected the fish to rip out 400 or 500 meters of line at any moment.

Now I was at a critical point. I had to grab the fish. When I had the double line four times around the spool, I gave the rod one last pull and grabbed the leader. I saw the fish for the first time in hours before, when it had shaken its beak near the boat.

He looked like a huge black shadow under the water. He was hooked outside his jaw, which is typical of a swordfish hook. The leader ran down his left side and was wrapped around his tail once. He wasn’t dead, but he was exhausted. He certainly looked exhausted. But I was cautious because I had heard stories of swordfish going crazy on the gaff, attacking boats or filleting themselves on a gaff.

But he didn’t move a muscle when I hit him on the shoulder with a flying gaff. I got another gaff in his tail, pulled him closer and got a line around his tail. Then I grabbed him by the beak and hit him three times on the head with an axe handle. Then I put a line through his gills and tied him to the boat.

It was over. The fight had lasted three hours and fifty-five minutes. I sat there for five minutes watching him, wondering if I had done something no one had ever done before. I tried to pull him into the boat, but I couldn’t even lift his head out of the water.

I went back to the radio to listen to “Lovely Doll.”

“’Lovely Doll,’ this is ‘Lundy Tours,’” I said. “I want you to know that I just caught a swordfish myself.”

Then I poured myself a rum and Coke and started worrying about sharks.

I went to Newport Beach to weigh the fish at the Balboa Angling Club. The boat was listing because the weight of the fish was pulling down on one side. I came across a sport fisherman named “Bess Bet”. The three boys on board helped me untie the fish and lift it onto my bow where we re-tied it.

At that point, when I knew the fish was out of danger, fatigue set in. My legs were rubbery. I must have talked to those guys non-stop for 20 minutes. I borrowed their swordfish flag and pulled it up in one of my outriggers.

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I can’t describe the feeling I had when I came into Newport Harbor with that fish draped over my bow. It was the first swordfish of the season. People were on the docks and beaches cheering me on. Boat horns were blowing. I stopped first at the tackle shop in Bisbee and the people there gave me a bottle of champagne. There were also a lot of people waiting for me at the Balboa Angling Club. They cheered as I had my picture taken with the swordfish. It was 11 feet 6 inches long and weighed 336 pounds.

This story, “A Swordfish the Hard Way,” first appeared in the October 1981 issue of Outdoor living.