Offshore Venice La

I had an overnighter with Heath and his friend Mike as well as Jimmy Campbell. We wanted to start off with some tuna and end up with some swordfish. The tuna cooperated a lot better then the swords did although I do have a sword story. We went out and chunked by a floater and had a steady pick in the afternoon of 50-60 pound yellowfin on chunks of blackfin. We had four fish in teh boat already when we managed to complete a triple header of yellowfin which was a circus as we were going under and around each other the whole time after that chaos we had 7 yellows in the boat. We made one more drift and picked up another tuna before we headed to the sword grounds. I started out at one spot and we had a dead current. I made a little drift there with no luck at all and very little bait up behind the boad. I moved about 8 miles to the east and found a little better current but still no fish. It was turning into a frustrating night as we couldnt find any good drift conditions. I left that spot about 345 in the morning and headed to another place about 15 miles away for a last ditch predawn bite. My deckhand lee was setting the 2nd bait out when he thought the drag wasnt set high enough on the first line so he was trying to stop the jug from going out when we realized the jug was gone and we had our first customer. I came tight on the fish and gave it to Heath who went to work. The fish never took one foot of line and we had the fish to the boat in about five minutes. I had a stick gaff ready to hit a small sword if it looked legal when we got a look at a fish that should have taken over an hour to land. IT was too late to get the harpoon so I stuck the fish with two gaffs, grab the bill with my gloves and held on for the show as the fish was not very happy. After it calmed down we lifted it into the boat and high fived Heath's first sword. It was a 68 inch 170 pound sword that never fought.