Home > Sailfish & Brief History

Every trip is different when you’re catching Sails because of their enigmatic personalities, tenacity, and the situational action of Sailfishing, involving the quality & art of the catch and the incredible aerial displays of each Sail.

As a group or species, billfish are known to be highly migratory, but this does not seem to be the case with many Sailfish tagging programmes done in Australia in the past. They tend to move little from their range, which may explain the relative abundance of Sails in the waters off Rompin all year round.  We believe that most Sails are still around even during the monsoon season, feeding on the ample supply of various species of baitfish & reproducing, and the monsoon is probably a welcome break for them! Some may also have moved off to deeper waters closer to P. Tioman & fanning in all directions on the east coast, but at present, no conclusive scientific studies have been done in the waters off K. Rompin in regards to movement, numbers, spawning behaviour & frequencies.

Some Sailfish trivia: Females are believed to lay between half a million to 1.6 million eggs during spawning periods. They were also considered to be a relatively short-lived species only living about 4-5 yrs, but tagging programs done for the past 30 yrs in Australia have produced a return tag of 10 yrs & 10 months, and the record in Florida was a Sail recaptured after 14yrs! Researchers now believe that they have an average life-span of about 8 yrs.

Another debate is about the speed of Sails & you would probably be surprised to know that measurements of their speed were made as far back as 1925 when a hooked Sailfish timed by stop-watch peeled off 100 yds of line in 3 seconds or 109 km/hr. With figures re-quoted many times over the yrs to 112km/hr at present, the Sailfish is undisputedly the fastest fish on the planet. Whatever the case, Sailfish & Marlin are incredibly beautiful marine animals & well deserving of our praise, admiration & the hype that is bestowed on them.

In the early 1900s, Sails were considered trash fish in Florida & a nuisance when caught by fishermen who were after prized fish like Kingfish & Mackerel. Any Sails caught were made into smoked-Sailfish! Hence, it took nearly 100 years to change their image from trash to their present status as the world’s most popular billfish species.

Even in Rompin, after the great Sailfishing was made known in 1997, the majority of the local community still regard Sails as a nuisance fish & are thankfully not targeting them commercially for food. They are often accidental by-catches in nets & are worth only a couple of cents ringgit per kg, often made into fish crackers or fish-farm-feed. Only a handful of local charters in Rompin recognize the economical & recreational sport fishing value of the Malaysian Sailfish (Layaran in Malay). We have heard stories about how local fishermen targeting more prized fish like Mackerel (Tenggiri in Malay) would ignore a Sailfish hooked on their lines & would simply let it leap & jump till it got off the hook on its own!