Setting Up A Basic Night Time Swordfish Drift

How To Set Up Your Drift For Night Time Swordfishing

Be Ready To Deploy Before You Reach The Swordfish Grounds:
Before you get out to the sword grounds, you should have all your rods rigged with buoys on and everything. Once you get out to the sword grounds and the area you would like to fish. (This is usually in a depth range of between 1100-1800 feet depending on where you are fishing). We also recommend having extra buoys and rigs already made before you get out to the grounds, this will drastically increase the amount of time you can keep baits in the water and increase your odds of catching a sword.

Deploying Your Baits For A Night Time Swordfish Drift
Stop your boat and figure out which way you will be drifting depending on how fast the current is moving and the direction and strength of the wind. Set your first bait on a buoy and drive away from away from the direction that you are going to be drifting. Drop the second and third buoy out in this manner. You should have about 50 yards between each buoy while you are fishing. The closest buoy should be about 50 yards from your boat.

Once you have set up this drift you can drop one or two tip rods straight down from the boat. Its good to alternate your rods in your rod holders so that you have one tip rod, one buoy rod, one tip rod, one buoy rod. This helps to keep your lines from tangling as well as to give you an understanding of which bait is which.

* Tip For Telling Your Baits Apart From Each other - try using different colored glow sticks for your swordfish jugs so that you know which one is which. This will especially help if you hook multiple swords at once.