A $17,315 fish: Destin captain does it again with monster swordfish

DESTIN, FL - It was a “lifetimer” of a fish.

That’s how Destin Capt. Tommy Braden described the immense swordfish he and his crew hauled in aboard Keith Howard’s Moveable Feast to take top honors in the Destin Swordfish Shootout at HarborWalk Marina this past weekend.

The 442-pound swordfish, reeled in by Austin Pleat, was worth $17,000 in prize money.

“Fishing is incredible,” Braden said.

This was the second big fish Braden has brought in during the last few weeks. He and his crew recently won the Emerald Coast Blue Marlin Classic with a 714.7-pound blue marlin. And now they took top dollar in the Swordfish Shootout.

“The Lord is trying to tell me something,” Braden said. “He has really blessed us ... It’s all him. I just ask and he blesses.”

Braden said they caught two swordfish with the first being smaller, but a lot more feisty.

“We actually hooked it late in the afternoon” in about 1,500 feet of water, Braden said. He added that hooking the fish in the day was a first for him, noting that swordfishing is usually done at night.

Although they hooked it in the daylight, it was dark by the time they got it in the boat.

“It was a stubborn fish,” Braden said.

They fought the fish for about nine hours. 

“We saw it right at dark,” he said. “It broke the water about an hour into it and we saw it’s head.”

At that point he figured it was about a 150-pound fish. But after fighting it for about six or seven hours, he was starting to think he miscalculated.

The swordfish then made one long fast run like he was just hooked, Braden said. Then about an hour or so later they got the 157-pounder aboard.

The second swordfish, was the money fish.

“We had the lines down about five minutes when it took the bait,” Braden said. They were using a large northern mackerel for bait fishing 65 miles out in the northeast side of DeSoto Canyon.

About 30 minutes later, the fish popped up behind the boat.

“We knew it was a really nice fish, but we didn’t know it was that big,” he said.

“It made some really long runs just under the surface of the water. It never jumped.”

Once they realized the massiveness of the fish, they put down the video cameras and got ready to haul the fish in. They had the fish boated in about 35 minutes after it was hooked.

“They’re all different,” Braden said. “Some just give up. We thought the first one was going to be the huge one, but it turned out to be just average.”

But the second one, “it was a lifetimer of a fish,” he said.

The Moveable Feast was one of 18 boats entered in the first-ever Swordfish Shootout at HarborWalk.

“They did a super job with the tournament,” Braden said.

Once the fish was weighed, it was given to the tournament officials and the fish was consumed and enjoyed by all.