For Little Torch Key’s captain Matt Pelphrey, his personal best swordfish catch was also one of his quickest fights.
On Jan. 7, it still took his four-man crew around an hour to pull a 90-inch, 405-pound swordfish up from 1,500 feet of water off Duck Key. But that was a welcome departure from his last monster haul, a 2023 fish that tipped the scales at 350 pounds after an eight-hour fight that pulled his boat 21 miles.
“We headed offshore, and on our first drift, I think we got a 48-inch fish,” Pelphrey told the Weekly. “You never know how big they are until you see them. On this one, we got the weight up, unhooked it, and all of a sudden, the line went ripping under the boat at what felt like 50 miles an hour.
“They can do that – they’ll come up and jump, then go right back down to 1,000 feet, and you’ll be hand-pulling inch by inch to get them back up. They’re an intense fish, and one of the only fish on the planet I wouldn’t want to be in the water with.”
Lacking the proper scale to weigh the trophy catch at their Duck Key dock, the crew brought the fish to Pelphrey’s crane hoist at his house in the Lower Keys. And while the 90-inch length trailed the 96-inch fish he reeled in two years ago, the robust body more than made up for it.
“If you take a fish and put it in a body bag overnight, he’s going to lose weight, so the one I weighed at 350 pounds would have been more,” Pelphrey said. “This fish was 90 inches long, but it was a lot fatter. So it’s probably my personal best by weight standards.”
With a growing YouTube channel, “Marathon Sport Fishing,” set to post a complete video of the catch next week, Pelphrey said sword fishing has become a singular obsession of his as he works to perfect his technique.
“I used to do some chartering, but now all I want to do is swordfish,” he said. “I’m on a mission, and I want to be one of the best sword guys out there, period.”
Have a newsworthy catch that tips the scales? We’d love to hear about it. Email alex@keysweekly.com.
