Anyone with any experience? Taking a late may trip (God willing). I have fished with this guide before for other species and he always seems to under promise and over deliver. He had an almost open calendar and picked the date he thought would be best.

What do you know about swords? Anyone been there and experienced that?

Plan on a long run to the fishing grounds. The upper gulf is very shallow! Swords are mainly night feeders, too.

If your are running from the FL panhandle...expect long runs to reach the depths you will target swords.

If you are daytime sword fishing, expect a pretty boring time staring intently at a rod tip.

You should also ask your charter captain if he has some good back-up deep drop plans for tiles, snowy grouper, etc for when the rod-tip staring boredom becomes too much.

If you are sword fishing at night...that is a different game that I have not experienced yet.

Day time, 70 mile run offshore, I am expecting a death March. I would rather troll for pelagics or deep drop for grouper but my brother and son are fired up for swordfish.

If you catch one you better buy a lottery ticket because the odds of success are about the same, especially during daylight hours!

There was one caught out of Destin Sunday on a day trip, weighed in at 202.5. There are some Pics on Pensacola fishing forum in the offshore section

I would have said the same thing a few years ago...but there is hardcore group of fishermen that are perfecting daytime sword fishing and gaining consistent success. Advancements in braided lines and high capacity electric reels have really changed what is possible for sport fishing in waters >1000ft.

Lot of good daytime sword fishing captains out there but one of the more notable right now is Nick Stanczyk out of SW FL. You should check out his YouTube channel, StanzFam, and just stare in amazement at some of the stuff he puts his clients on.

To each his own but using an electric reel isn’t fishing., at least to me.
It’s flipping a switch on an electric winch.

There are several good electric reels that still allow manual cranking if you choose to fight the fish in that method. Trust me though, after you have reeled in 1000ft of line just to check your baits, you will want an electric reel as you make drop after drop after drop. This comes in especially handy when fishing for tiles. Doesn't mean you have to use the electric feature to fight the fish.

Now...this is getting into serious derail territory, but you could easily equate these advancements in fishing technology to the advancements we see in the shooting and hunting sports as well. We've gone from using stick and string @ <30yds to pulling out multiple gadgets, getting a shooting solution, dialing turrets and firing off a shot as far as you want to take / risk. Most wouldn't call that hunting...but some do.

I am not advocating or arguing either method...I was just point out the evolution of the sport and stating that having success on daytime swords is not the minuscule odds you projected.

Fishing for swords in the daylight has changed, their resting grounds are becoming more apparent and the techniques are getting tuned so success has been decent. We caught this one last week, hooked up about 10 minutes after the first drop, got it in the boat 45 minutes later. Second drop we hooked up after 20 minutes, fish was on for about 5 minutes and broke off. Appears some tangling occurred and the braid cut through the leader. Fished for 3 more hours without a bite.

Nice fish!

Great eating, too!

I am hopeful, but leery. Technically, I guess it won't all be daylight, we won't start heading back in till 10PM 18 hour trip.

WL205, that is awesome.

Thanks for all the input. 1 week till go.

No swords, saved the day spotting a log. 7 mahi from 5 to 30 pounds.. almost an hour to boat the biggest on spinning tackle and live bait. Had another, maybe bigger, hit a popper and fight for 20 mi ites before throwing the hook.

Hate you struck out on a sword...but good to hear you salvaged the trip on Mahi. A 30lber is awesome!

Amazing how quick it can go from a bust to an awesome day.

Ain't that the truth.

I've been watching several of Capt. Mike Genoun's (Florida Sport Fishing Journal) live seminars and he regularly says "All it takes is one good fish to make a great day on the water." (paraphrased)

And he's right....you can have an absolute crappy day...but if you luck out and catch one great fish, it can make the whole day worth it.