A day off turned into a possible world record off Costa Rica's Pacific coast. On the morning of May 9, retired American angler Will Hefley was trolling live sardines from a small panga near the mouth of the Parrita River, fishing with Quepos guide Captain Ruddy Zapata, when a giant Pacific black snook ate his bait in about 15 feet of water.
What followed was a slow, grinding fight with no fireworks. "He battled the fish with heavy gear and tough Suffix line for about 30 minutes," said Steve Hoyland, owner of Steve Hoyland's Adventures, who relayed the day from Texas. "The fish fought deep and tough but never jumped."
The angler who hooked it remembered the strike as almost gentle. "She never surfaced," he wrote in a first-person account for The Tico Times. "Not once during the entire fight, and not even at the boat when we netted her." He called it 25 minutes "that felt like two hours."
The snook was too big to fit cleanly in the net, so Zapata grabbed it by hand and hauled it aboard. It took two men to lift. On certified scales at Marina Pez Vela in Quepos, the fish weighed 72.6 pounds, measured 48 inches and taped 32 inches around the girth.
That would shatter the International Game Fish Association all-tackle record for Pacific black snook — 59 pounds, 8 ounces, set in 2014 by Ward Michaels, who also weighed his fish at Marina Pez Vela. Across the eight snook species the IGFA recognizes, Hefley's would be the largest by more than ten pounds.
There was a moment it might never have hit the scale. "Hefley wanted to release the fish, but Ruddy talked him into keeping and weighing it for a possible world record," Hoyland said. The angler had a personal reason to hesitate beyond the fish itself: the record he stood to break belongs to Michaels, a close friend who first brought him to these waters. He described May 9 as "simultaneously the greatest and most difficult day of my fishing life."
Hoyland says the IGFA paperwork is complete and the documentation is on its way to the organization's Florida headquarters for review. The snook was later cleaned and eaten, with a replica mount planned — possibly for display at the marina where both the old record and its likely successor came over the rail.
"It's almost sure to be a new Pacific black snook world record," Hoyland said. "There really is no place offering better giant snook fishing than the west coast of Costa Rica out of Quepos." Until the IGFA signs off, the 72.6-pounder stays "pending" — but the certified weight already dwarfs anything in the book.
