So Cal Swordfishing

[Mikey Mike]

Wow that's quite an article. I'll have to read that at home to get the good stuff out of it.

Thanks and Good Luck

[Keith Poe]

Yes it is a good read super chum, I'm at the job site on my blackberry tethered to my lap top.

Copper re pipe, all new gas lines & waste, new pannel complete rewire two story, Yawn
easy, swording is a )^&%&fun

I get some more good 411 dope for you to digest laterrrrrr

[Mikey Mike]

reposted by Mikey so I may comment on a couple things. I am not looking for a fight or anything negative I am just trying to add to this discussion on swordfish. This origenal post no longer fits with the 1000 charactor limit so I have edited it to suit my disscussion needs. By all means feel free to look up and read Freds most excellent post in it's entirety.

06-06-2004, 05:42 PM
Captain Fred Archer
Senior Member Join Date: Jan 1970
Location: Laguna Niguel/Cabo, CA.Baja Cal sur, USA/Mexico.
Posts: 1,478


More Daytime Swordfish Tactics

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Here's a taste of the book's daytime fishing flip side...

I've caught and skippered boats, including mine, to a pile of night broadbill over the years, all on the east coast. We have caught five or six, including a released smaller one down in Cabo; all daytime fish.

I have found that a daytime swordfish is an opportunistic big game hunting proposition. In other words you never know when that big "Bull" of a swordy is going to show up while it's light, so you must be prepared and have a dedicated big gun ready and waiting for him when he pops up.

I learned the night fishing tricks on my own and from some of the other early partcipants in that game. We actually hooked five and landed three the first time we tried the night shift thing. I learned the daytime swordfish game from two of the Mazatlan masters who really know their stuff when it comes to daytime fish and were willing to teach me their secrets.

The following I learned from studying these mysterious and different fish. Much, if not everything, as far as how a swordfish fights and reacts to a bait depends on the condition he is in when you hook him. They are unlike any other fish that we go after, in that they are designed to withstand the almost unimaginable and radical changes that take place as they follow their natural lifestyle of feeding in the near-freezing waters and huge pressures of great depths, then returning to the surface thru the shocking reverse changes in pressure and temperature that would kill nearly any other species of fish, to finally warm their bodies so they can digest their meals and return again to the depths to feed again.

It is these surface fish that daytime fishermen encounter and how they fight when we hook them depends on what stage of decompression, body warming and dispersal of body gases they are in at the time. This gets pretty detailed and I won't waste your time with that here. Besides, the "what happens" is more important than the "why it happens" as far as this discussion is concerned. I'm pretty confident that I've already said enough to make the point anyway.

All of this accounts for what I will call here the "typical daytime swordfish fight". And yes, I have seen the same kind of fight repeated often enough to be able to use the word "typical". Night fish are a different matter, as they are almost exclusively feeders that are comfortable at whatever depth you hook them in and they fight accordingly and much more unpredictably. Better than daytime fish, as far as what I have experienced.

This is the end of the portion of Fred's post that I will be commenting on. Mikey

[Mikey Mike]

Comments on Fred's post

Fred mentions " their natural lifestyle of feeding in the near-freezing waters and huge pressures of great depths, then returning to the surface thru the shocking reverse changes in pressure and temperature that would kill nearly any other species of fish, to finally warm their bodies so they can digest their meals and return again to the depths to feed again."

Mikeys comments:

I tend to think different. I have seen swords on videos attached to the bottom of oil rigs come in really fast.

I have allso read swords have fluid sacs that warm their eyes and brains. I believe they swim fast on the bottom to produce heat in their muscles that is then used to heat their brains

They do not bask to warm up and digest.

My hypothysis: They bask in SoCal because they are out of oxygen.

This hypothysis is important to your fishery because the amount of available oxygen at depth may not support daytime deep dives that swordfish commonly are known for in other areas of the globe.

Swordfish spend night in the mixed layer and daytime on the bottom in Florida. I think in Socal the available oxygen is not allways suffecient for them to spend their days on the bottom.

I do not think there is a sat service that can track available disolved oxygen at depth. I do not know if oxygen levels on the ocean floor correlates to any of the current filters available with sat services.

I have nowticed they net tuna along yer coast. This sugests the tuna do not dive under the nets like they do in the Atlantic Ocean along the east coast of USA.Netting tuna in the atlantic just doesn't work.

Swordfish in Florida rarely bask. Therefor somthing is different about the two areas.

Swordfish along the grand banks may bask but since the water up there is rougher they may not bask as long and would be impossible to see. Rough water is naturally more oxygenated. If they do bask in these waters that suggest to me either the water is less oxygenated or it could be cold. If it is cold then that suggests they are at their northern boundary and will migrate south. They do migrate south. Does that suggest yur fish are allso at their northern boundary?

Or does this suggest your fish are living in an area with insufficent disolved oxygen on the ocean floor?

[Mikey Mike]

Aloha
I google my thoughts on oxygen and found this. It doesn't prove my theory but is interesting. I do think the nutrient rich cold water in Socal is probably effected this way. Maybe only on the bottom in certain areas,,kinda like submarine rivers or pools of doom.

I especially enjoyed learning the phrase" Hypoxia-based habitat compression"

If you do have hypoxia based habitat compression it would be worth trying to track the oxygen levels. More googlin needed. lol



Hypoxia-based habitat compression of tropical pelagic fishes
ERIC D. PRINCE 1,* and C. PHILLIP GOODYEAR 2
1 National Marine Fisheries Service, Southeast Fisheries Science Center, 75 Virginia Beach Drive, Miami, FL 33149, USA
2 1214 North Lakeshore Drive, Niceville, FL 32578, USA
Correspondence to *e-mail: eric.prince@noaa.gov
Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
KEYWORDS
dissolved oxygen • habitat compression • hypoxia • overexploitation • tropical pelagic fishes • upwelling
Abstract


Large areas of cold hypoxic water occur as distinct strata in the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) and Atlantic oceans as a result of high productivity initiated by intense nutrient upwelling. We show that this stratum restricts the depth distribution of tropical pelagic marlins, sailfish, and tunas by compressing the acceptable physical habitat into a narrow surface layer. This layer extends downward to a variable boundary defined by a shallow thermocline, often at 25 m, above a barrier of cold hypoxic water. The depth distributions of marlin and sailfish monitored with electronic tags and average dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature profiles show that this cold hypoxic environment constitutes a lower habitat boundary in the ETP, but not in the western North Atlantic (WNA), where DO is not limiting. Eastern Pacific and eastern Atlantic sailfish are larger than those in WNA, where the hypoxic zone is much deeper or absent. Larger sizes may reflect enhanced foraging opportunities afforded by the closer proximity of predator and prey in compressed habitat, as well as by the higher productivity. The shallow band of acceptable habitat restricts these fishes to a very narrow surface layer and makes them more vulnerable to over-exploitation by surface gears. Predictably, the long-term landings of tropical pelagic tunas from areas of habitat compression have been far greater than in surrounding areas. Many tropical pelagic species in the Atlantic Ocean are currently either fully exploited or overfished and their future status could be quite sensitive to increased fishing pressures, particularly in areas of habitat compression.


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Received 30 March 2005 Revised version accepted 7 July 2005

[Keith Poe]

Have not had time to read everything you posted but belive this might be what you are looking for.


Have to do some stuff more later

Below is a post from another site.

Oxygen Declines = More Jumbo Squid, Heed The Feed

Oxygen Declines and the Shoaling of the Hypoxic Boundaries in the California current.


Read this link on page 5 and figure 4 and you will see Humboldt squid numbers could easily grow and why Swordfish Makos etc could easily change their behavior and migration patters to possibly become more prone to stay in one area like the California bight inner waters point conception California current etc.

The area off Point Conception is where I was able to catch Jumbo Squid over a 25 mile area.

Commercial landings of Swordfish and Sharks are reporting/showing Jumbo Squid in them as their main diet.

This begs the question what are they eating?

I believe it could be Market Squids as there is plenty around with Hake etc.

Almost all market squid are caught off the coast of California.

Almost 84 million pounds were harvested in U.S. commercial fisheries in 2008.

They used to land over 100,000 tons of Market Squid


http://www.topp.org/sites/topp.org/f...ograd_2008.pdf


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Life's journey is not about what you acquire but who you become.


310-562-6205

[Keith Poe]

I really can't say much about how they fight day verses night but have done both just not much.

I can tell you they do harpoon swordfish & BFT in the north Atlantic.

Just saw a vid of them doing it in Nova Scotia.

The swordfish I have seen at the surface were for the most part in many cases very slow movers all most in slow motion seeming to be stupid in many cases but have seen one about 600 pounds slapping it's bill charging our 65' yacht.

Have seen them greyhounding several times to.

Watched one about 500 pounds at the transom take a bait after taking about 15 minutes
to super slowly swim back and forth then finally just opened her mouth to let the half dead mack drift in it's mouth.

I satellite tagged a swordfish here as captain and shooter for Fox Sports while producing a show ISF tagging for Pier.

About 30 minutes later the spotter said get up here we found another one.

When I was running the boat I said at the last minute JIM if that is the same fish do not kill it.

Jim said sorry bro it was a really nice fish well get another one.

That was the second sat tag on the west coast locally.

The first was the day before by a 30' pipe on a yacht, hint hint.

Hold on I'm getting to why I am telling you this.

The tag was actually useful information.

The fish was button holed as the brass dart was all the way through it from dorsal to the belly dart turned side ways.

Most planks are 40' ours was only 20 and I had a 40 pound camera in my hand wheel in the other watching the view finder watching the harpooner direct me when he saw the fish with his harpoon pole and had to listen to the spotter over the radio at the same time.

50 yards 2 degrees port etc.

Ran three fish that day and almost bought the boat from him.

The fish that we sat tagged and later killed after button holeing it a three hundred pound buoyancy ball and three one hundred pound buoyancy balls down 1500' from the sat record
and 45 minutes later came up half a mile away.

About 250 pound fish.

Pier went on to put a plank on their research boat and sat tagged more learning from what they told me they are usually 900 - 1500' during the day and near surface at night.

The swordfish are predominately preying on humboldt/jumbo/flying squid all the same in this area acording to the gill net harpoon landings.

The sat tracking and sonar marks diet all suggest they are chasing down humboldts where they live.

Not much reason for the swordfish to go to the bottom here as their prey is usually 900-1000'

The bottom here is a hell of a lot deeper in most areas to say the least so deep no way swordie is going to it.

Humboldt's seem to stick around structure acording to tracking and the structure at the appropriate depth they seem to like is only in very minimal areas with enough resources to feed their veracious diet.

I will post humboldt satelite tracking to show the affiliation with structure and depth.
The tracking is from the gulf of California where they seem to come up most nights
but they are not usually coming up around here.

I belive they have all the food they need at depth here and do not usually need to come up to feed and the tracking shows they can easily do their preying at depth or surface all at the same behavior.

A mystery to scientist.

http://topp.org/sites/topp.org/files/topp/map_1.jpg

http://www.topp.org/sites/topp.org/f...324Tagging.pdf

[Keith Poe]

If you want to see a map of Mexican Commercial Gill-nets and Long Liners data on Swordfish open the link at the bottom of this page.

Below is a copy & paste from another post I did recently of some of the data I am using as a reference to dial in the king, Big plus.


Mexican Commercial Gill-nets and Long Liners data on Swordfish.

Mexican Commercial Gill-nets and Long Liners data on Swordfish.

Also allot of Blue sharks caught and some indication Swordfish are here year round as they fish out of Ensenada.

About 520 miles of long line from 13 boats Long liners seem to average One Swordfish for every 320 hooks per set average Long lining over night at an average based at 200 pounds each.

There are 4 Gill-netters Fishing for Swordfish as well.

Ensenada is the main port and San Carlos but mainly the fishery is out of Ensenada.

Recreational catches are usually around 41 a year.

The long liners seem to switch to another species while the Gill netters do well all most year round with December being their best month.

The Gill netters here are pushed out because of Marie mammals.

It would be interesting to see their distribution of fishing areas over a map to see if it correlates to structure.

There catch and by catch consist of 63% sharks 23% Swordfish 3% Mako 60% Blue Sharks 14% other.

This could be an indication of what happened causing the Jumbo Squid to increase in recent years being the predators have taken a hit.


http://isc.ac.affrc.go.jp/pdf/ISC8pd...eport_ISC8.pdf

[Keith Poe]

Originally Posted by Mikey Mike

California & Davidson currents, the Davidson current is the California under current.

Given this current information knowing where they flow and collide is key as well as landing data associated with satellite swordfish & humboldt squid satellite tracking mirroring each other at depth night or day.

Aloha Kp

I lived in San Bernardino as a kid and even though people say socal has one season I remember the winds.

The winds were basically very seasonal

How much does the wind effect these two major currents? Question is from a seasonal standpoint.

I ask this because just because there is a current doens't mean there is an upwelling. Wind direction and speed and prevelance have a major influence on upwelling creation.

Maybe the fish are around year round but they may move a bit??

Terrafin started last June offering Altimetry Charts Info


What is Altimetry?- Altimetry satellites calculate the distance from the satellite to the surface (ocean or land) by measuring the round trip time of a radar pulse. Based on this, ths surface height of the water can be determined.

Interpreting the information - The charts that we are producing at this time show the Sea Suface Height (SSH) Anomaly, measured in centimeters. The general concept is that the oceans currents and eddies will push the water to different levels. The usual interpretation is that warm eddies will be higher than the basic level, while cold eddies will be lower than the surrounding water. However, this is a generalization and it doesn't seem to apply in all areas. At times we will see highs that are associated with areas of cooler water, so you can't just assume that the highs are warm water. The areas between these highs and lows would have stronger currents and are likely to have more activity. It's important to realize that this data is looking at the ocean on a very large scale. You are not going to see the subtle changes and edges that we look for in the much smaller scale SST and Chlorophyll charts. But, the altimetry data can give a good overview of the bigger picture and the general movement of the waters. When we have a long stretch of cloud cover that prevents us from getting and useful SST data, this can at least be a good reference to what is happening out there, since this data is not affected by clouds. Be sure to try the Loop Tool to get a feel for how the waters are moving.

[Keith Poe]

Wanted to share some more 411 with the guys that are following this especially the ones that are targeting swordfish as a result of this effort.

The link

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pfrp/nov06mtg/dewar.pdf

is some of the best data modern tech & science has to offer in many ways from electronics like satelite tracking with pressure sensors for depth detection temperature associated with light levels and especially oxygen sensors.

The more you study this data(all of it) in this study the more you will understand where when and how to target swordfish.

There is a lot of information that can incredibly narrow down targeting swordfish especially if you understand their main diet associated with the data in this link.

I will let you read the data your self as it is an important learning understanding curve.

Then I would appreciate any input of thoughts.

I keep learning more 411 all the time and eventually share it when i feel i have a good Handel on it and am ready to discuss it with others.

I started with the oxygen and temperature at depth sensors many months ago and came up with basically thousands of dollars in sensors that could be deployed by rod and reel
to read temperature at depth salinity oxygen pressure etc.

While they are great tools they are not necessary considering the scattering layer, mass Humboldt's jelly fish plankton associated with the data on this link can for the most part give you an indication where to target swordfish at also associated with depth/structure.

Take the time to really understand this data if you are going to be a So Cal Sword Fishermen and I belive you will be successful if you make it a priority to forget everything you have ever heard and use logic associated with the facts in the data here associated with the facts of their main diet being humboldt squid.

Dr Gilley is tracking humboldts up north to add to the gulf of California satelite tagging.

One other issue is I have done allot of research and from what I have researched most of the swordfish caught fished in gear usually result in bills being hooked.

I would like to hear more on the soft mouth of swordfish leading to the method of letting them eat it for a long time.

I have a few opinions on this.

One is if you are going to use the main diet of local swordfish humboldts in an area with humboldts they will have to be used live so they are not cannibalised.

This will result in bill whacks as the humboldts are very large causing swordfish to bill whack them usually taking off the head and eating up to 3 large humboldts in a 250 class swordfish.

We killed and cut the head off a 250 class swordfish.

We lifted it by it's tail on block & tackle connected to the tower 5 to 1 purchase.
Slit it's guts out still hanging up over the side and then sawed the head off.
I took it by the bill and drug it over to the swim step to check out the soft mouth from the front and back.

After running my hands back and forth for 15 minutes as Jim dressed the swordfish I only found a mouth nearly as hard as a rock.

I belive it's so hard it usually does not let a hook easily stick till it's deep in the stomach.

I belive most that are hooked by tossing baits are bill wrapped eventually resulting in being lost as the hook was not large enough to deeply penetrate the bill/ face etc.


http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pfrp/nov06mtg/dewar.pdf