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Figure 1. — Principal areas of sport fishing for billfishes . 



Middle Atlantic Bight. — This region from Mon- 

 tauk to Hatteras, North Carolina, harbors large con- 

 centrations of migrating white marlin during the 

 summer. Large blue marlin are taken frequently off 

 Hatteras, occasionally straying northward, together 

 with sailfish. Swordfish are sufficiently common off 

 Hatteras to support a local, commercial longline 

 fishery, but this species is taken only rarelv by an- 

 glers. 



Southeast Atlantic Coast. — White marlin, blue 

 marlin, and sailfish are found scattered southward 

 from Hatteras to Cape Canaveral, Florida, but they 

 are not usually available for sport fishing because 

 the Gulf Stream is far offshore and not easily acces- 

 sible to sportfishing boats. From about Stuart, 

 Florida, south of Cape Canaveral, through the 

 Florida Keys billfishes may be quite common 

 periodically. Sailfish may be abundant at times and 

 blues and whites probably occur throughout the 

 year. Most angler-caught longbill spearfish are re- 

 ported from this region, and swordfish are not in- 

 frequently taken, the latter catches being made usu- 

 ally by anglers inadvertently drifting baits deep 

 from disabled boats. 



Gulf of Mexico. — The eastern Gulf of Mexico 

 supports little billfish sport fishing because of the 

 long distance (40-80 nautical miles) to "blue water" 

 where billfishes occur, although organized activity 

 off St. Petersburg, Florida, is beginning to pinpoint 

 the relation between surface currents and billfish 

 distribution. In the northeastern Gulf from around 

 Panama City, Florida, there have been a number of 

 sailfish, whites, and blues taken by a growing sport- 

 fishing fleet, and swordfish are occasionally seen at 

 the surface. Nearly all the fishing is carried out in the 

 "Loop Current." Heavy billfishing occurs off the 

 Mississippi Delta for all species of Atlantic billfish. 

 Swordfish have been seen there with increasing fre- 

 quency, and a few are taken on rod and reel. The 



Texas coast, especially off Port Aransas, yields 

 good catches of sails and whites, while farther 

 offshore blue marlin probably occur throughout 

 much of the year. 



No regular sport fishing for billfish is conducted in 

 the Gulf between the Mexican-Texas border south- 

 ward until Cozumel where, in the past two years, 

 fleets of American Sportfishermen have traversed 

 the Florida Current to partake of some very exciting 

 fishing for sailfish and white marlin. The results of 

 fishing suggest a catch rate per boat as high as ex- 

 perienced anywhere in the Atlantic. 



Eastern Central America. — Mather (1952) re- 

 ported sailfish, white marlin, and blue marlin widely 

 distributed all along the Central American coast to 

 the Gulf of Mexico at Cozumel, but no extensive 

 fishery is known from this region. There is no 

 reason, however, to believe that sport fishing for 

 billfish should not be reasonably productive along 

 parts of the Central American coast, especially in 

 view of the heavy concentration of blue marlin re- 

 ported there by Ueyanagi et al. (1970). 



Northeastern South America. — Very good angling 

 for sailfish has been reported off Cartagena and 

 Santa Marta, Colombia, but this effort is limited to 

 tournaments, which frequently produce relatively 

 large fish. 



Possibly the best angling anywhere for white mar- 

 lin occurs along the coast of Venezuela off Carabal- 

 leda, east of La Guaira. The entire coast here is 

 excellent at least to Puerto Cabello, where blues and 

 sails occur, and where whites are common. Spear- 

 fish are occasionally landed along this coast. The 

 waters from Puerto Cabello westward to Lake 

 Maracaibo have not, to my knowledge, been ex- 

 plored by anglers. 



East of Venezuela, the heavy influx of fresh water 

 from the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers, with the as- 

 sociated high turbidity, does not favor billfish sport 

 fishing, although commercial fishermen do catch 

 billfishes offshore of and beneath the relatively shal- 

 low freshwater effluent. From Fortaleza, Brazil, to 

 Sao Paulo, billfishing activity is limited, probably 

 because blue water is too far offshore and outside the 

 range of most Sportfishermen. Longliners take 

 good catches of blue and white marlin offshore of 

 the entire coast. Whites, sails, and blues are taken 

 by those intrepid anglers capable of the offshore run 

 of 150 to 200 nautical miles to the warm, blue wa- 

 ters. Farther south, swordfish are scattered off 

 southern Brazil and even Uruguay and Argentina, 

 but sport fishing for them off eastern South 



17 



