Longbow14

I've eaten blue marlin and I think I like sword better. Swordfish being found in every ocean and latitudes from nova scotia to chile make a more readily available commercial fish, It's been a food fish for ever where as marlins and sails are a bit more difficult to hunt (not many harpooned marlin). Swords are also not looked upon as highly as marlins as far as game fish, I think another reason is that marlin grow bigger and look nicer than swords so they do get a preferncial treatment. All big game fish (billfish, tuna, sharks) should be treated carefully but i do feel that way about basically everything I catch.

Capt. Alex Pinney

Im not going to kill a blue marlin or white marlin just out of spite , because there are alot more better eating fish , but if I am in a tournament and he rolls up and is big enough you better bet I am not going to think twice about sinking flyers because I am there to make money. And as far as what they do with them at tournaments , every marlin is examined by scientist and then donated to homeless shelters and some turned into cat food.

finfever61

Many many years ago before it was frowned upon we used to harvest a sailfish every now and then to smoke. If you like smoked mullet or king you would love smoked sailfish.

billin

I have eaten Marlin several times in Kona it reminds me of Amberjack not great but edible there poor food value have made them a great sport fish same as Tarpon for the inshore crowd why kill them they really don't taste good. same thing in reverse is what caused the near extinction of swordfish and is crippling Tuna fish today. It's bad to taste good. Sailfish taste like crap but short bill spears taste better than any white meat fish you could imagine.

Captain Mickey O'Reilly

I think that it just comes down to personal preference, and taste. I don't care for the taste of the billfish that I have eaten, so I won't kill one. With the beautiful taxidermy available today, you can snap some pics, and have a beautiful mount done without killing the fish. I do agree with Captain Pinney when you have money on the line, put them on the deck. I have killed more billfish in over thirty years of fishing for them than I would have ever imagined, and seen many more blues, whites, and sails, killed on other boats. Has all of this caused a decline in our ability to catch billfish? I don't know, but I can tell you that the fishery has changed over the years.

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SouthAlabamaSlayer

Reminds you of amberjack? Amberjack is in my top 3 saltwater fish to eat. I don't know who is cooking yours haha.

KnotForReel

^^^^My sentiments exactly! The BEST fish I EVER had was a piece of grilled Amberjack...and while I'm at it, a couple years ago, Jake Macarthy caught a Sailfish off the Pensacola Beach Pier and was kind enough to bring me some steaks off of it. All I did was marinate it in Italian dressing and grill it and it was FANTASTIC...tasted like a medium rare ribeye steak...

So like SAS said above, I don't know who's cooking yours.

Chris V

You have to look at it from multiple angles to come to a reasonable decision of whether to kill or not.

North Atlantic billfish stocks are pretty healthy. They are healthy because measures have been set forth to keep them that way. There is a legal size and bag limit like most pelagics. If you are legal, then you are exactly that. Whether that's enough for most to justify killing one or not us personal choice. I have eaten blue marlin and don't find it that appealing. I had it smoked and it was ok, but I could smoke my flip flop and find it "edible". If its a tourney with big money on the line and a very limited annual take as it is, you better believe I would sink a gaff. Sad that money dictates such, but the fish won't be wasted.

Swordfish are a VERY different animal. The only similarities in a swordfish and other "billfish" is the bill; it stops there. The growth rate is different and their range is much more widespread than marlin. They can handle water temps from just above freezing to 90 degrees. They aren't as glamorous as the other bills and other than in some regions, the contributions to the local economy aren't nearly as great.

If you break it down by dollars, how much is a blue marlin worth? A white marlin? A swordfish? Not just here, but across the country. There's no doubt that a live billfish is worth far more than a dead one. Swordfish are sought for their eating qualities as much as their fighting ability. Marlin are not.

With this rant being said, this is how I think about it. Whether others do or not brings it back to where we started; personal choice

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knot @ Work

To Kill or not to kill that is a question we all need to ask every time you catch a fish or shoot a Deer. I am a meat eater. Meat and fish are expensive/
My wife says my fish are around 1K a plate.. I think she exagerates a little.

If you eat what you take set the rest free for someone else to catch later.
Never ate a marlin, yet anyway...

aroundthehorn

Hahaha...I read that post, too, and thought "what the hell is this guy talking about?"

To each his own, though.