About Us

Are you intrigued with South Florida’s recreational swordfish?

If so, you might want to join the Swordfish Club.  With meetings every other month and the quality of the guest speakers, its one club worth joining.

The recreational sword fishermen account for less than one percent of the Swordfish landed, but we’ve got more people watching us than the commercial fishermen. We better report our fish!  Our theory is, we do report as many fish as we can so when the commercial longliners petition for these fish in Washington, we’ve got numbers and recognition.  One of our directors is even on the NMFS advisory panel, to help represent us.

The Swordfish Club was formed to help educate, promote, and share knowledge of the most elusive and respected Billfish in the world. It is in the best interest of those who pursue the catch and/or release of Swordfish to place emphasis on conservation and show sportsmanship to our fellow fisherman. With the cooperation of all club members, our shared passion will establish the importance of this species to our local and national fisheries for now and years to come. Reporting our catches and non-catches through the club is one way we help to obtain better statistics to where we stand in the recreational swordfishing community.

The club was launched several years ago by offshore fishing expert, Captain Skip Smith and marine artist R.J. Boyle. Smith says the object is to exchange information on swordfishing and to encourage sword fishermen to report their landings (and their misses and releases) to NOAA Fisheries.

By law, anyone who lands a swordfish is required to report to NOAA Fisheries within 24 hours.

”They’re an awesome fish,” Smith said of swords. “They’re still my favorite.”

Very Truly Yours,

Captain Skip Smith & Captain Bouncer Smith, Jeff Anderson and Ron Coddington
www.SwordfishClub.org

“The Swordfish Club meetings provide a great opportunity to exchange on various levels of topics.

The breadth and scope of the club meetings is nicely balanced by the various guests & visitors as well as adventure tales from club members, like John Anderson’s fishing adventure from NE Australia. Thanks for sharing. But what I want to know is how he got all of those great photos. Sometimes it is hard enough to simply fish, let alone gather a nice collection of photos to serve as nice reminders of the story.

Ron Coddington always brings good information to the table from current events going on at NMFS and ICCAT. And Vinnie Montella provides similar feedback, but from a slightly different point of view, (both are serving as NMFS Advisory Panel members, on their own dime & time). Captain Allie always has something to say that scratches the sword fisherman’s ear. And Captain Ollie occasionally provides some good nuggets of info: like the importance of engaging 4 wheel drive, if you have it, while loading and unloading your vessel at the boat ramp.

I remember back when, some club meetings could fit the members at just 3 round tables. Last night’s meeting seemed to have attracted more than 150 members and guests all with a passion or ailment for swordfishing. RJ is always quick to get hand drawings of fishing illustrations onto the canvas so that others can understand the technical details a little better.

Indeed, it is the charisma that Skip Smith brings to the leadership group that keeps the Swordfishing Club going with interesting agendas, fishy stories and a healthy membership base.

Again, special thanks to the Swordfishing Pioneers (from the Catch-22) that came from their small little island to share their journey and present day experiences.

With all the good stuff happening and great raffle prizes, I guess Capn. Ken nor Cliff got to boast of their fishing tale of the 800 pound swordfish they got last month. Do’h, wait that was Kennie’s story, probably a fisherman’s fib. We better de-rate that story a bit and call it a 650# fish by more credible guestimates. Still an exceptionally large fish caught recently, and right out front.”

Michael Baumstark