On July 9, while Hurricane Dennis was whipping up waves off the Bahamas, 11-year-old Marshall Rinker, whom everyone knows as Boomer, was fooling around on his family boat while it was moored at the Green Turtle Club in the Abacos
He was fishing around the docks using a dead snapper on a stout rod rigged with 65-pound-test braided line and wire leader when he got the hit of a lifetime. After a fight, Boomer brought up a huge cubera snapper.
“I’m guessing it was 80 pounds when he caught it,” said Boomer’s dad, Skip Rinker.
The family thought it might be a record, but they couldn’t find a certified scale in the Bahamas. So they left the huge snapper in a cooler until the hurricane moved north and they could make the ocean crossing back to their home in Tequesta.
On Monday, they took the snapper to Pete Schulz at Fishing Headquarters in Jupiter, whose certified scale weighed it at 76 pounds.
The Rinkers submitted the catch to the International Game Fish Association. If certified, Boomer’s snapper would beat the existing junior (male) world record for cubera snapper by more than 23 pounds.
By Willie Howard, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
