{"id":218417,"date":"2026-04-04T07:07:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/218417\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T07:07:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:07:06","slug":"charter-boat-pulls-in-500-pound-swordfish-in-florida-keys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/218417\/","title":{"rendered":"Charter boat pulls in 500-pound swordfish in Florida Keys"},"content":{"rendered":"

(NewsNation<\/a>) \u2014\u00a0A Florida<\/a> boat crew recently reeled in a 480-pound swordfish worth thousands of dollars at market, and viral video<\/a> proves this is no exaggerated fish story.<\/p>\n

The monstrous creature was hooked Feb. 18 as charter boat captain Jose Rodriguez Jr., who operates a business<\/a> in the Florida Keys, was taking a Pennsylvania family on a deep-sea fishing excursion. They ended up hooking a large swordfish and then fought five hours to reel in the reluctant specimen to the side of the boat.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was all hands on deck. We had the dad helping. We had a little girl helping,\u201d recalls Rodriguez, who credits a nicely timed wave with helping to push the swordfish into the boat.<\/p>\n

Florida and Mississippi enact voter citizenship checks, sparking a lawsuit in the Sunshine State <\/a><\/p>\n

The catch yielded 200 pounds of seafood, Rodriguez estimated.<\/a> That amount would bring in $5,000, at the typical market rate of $25 <\/a>per pound.<\/p>\n

But Rodriguez said his clients, the family from Pennsylvania, took 30 pounds of filets for themselves and generously donated the rest to locals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere had to have been 50 to 70 people waiting at the dock,\u201d the captain said.<\/p>\n

Swordfish are considered one of the most difficult fish to catch. They live at depths of between 1,800 and 2,600 feet, they bite light, and, as Rodriguez can attest, they will fight you for hours. \u00a0<\/p>\n

For the record<\/a>, the largest swordfish ever caught was logged in 1953: A 1,182-pound specimen was pulled in off the coast of Chile.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NewsNation. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(NewsNation) \u2014\u00a0A Florida boat crew recently reeled in a 480-pound swordfish worth thousands of dollars at market, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,2472,29,99187,94377],"class_list":["post-218417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-keys","tag-florida-news","tag-jose-rodriguez","tag-swordfish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}