Cheers, Capt. Peter B. Wright
Capt. Peter B. Wright was quite possibly the best heavy-tackle captain of the modern era. The IGFA Hall of Famer was born in 1944 and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At age 11, he started working on boats and wired his first marlin in the Bahamas. Wright received a degree in biology from Georgia Tech in 1965 and a master’s in marine biology from the University of Miami in 1967.
Capt. Peter B. Wright grew up in Florida, but fell in love with the black marlin fishery off Cairns, Australia. He fished the Great Barrier Reef every season from 1968-2008.
In 1968, after collecting cephalopods for a research program in Antarctica, Wright found his way to Australia. He hitchhiked to Cairns and fished for black marlin on the Great Barrier Reef with Capt. George Bransford, who is credited with catching the first 1,000-pound marlin, or “grander,” in Australia.
The Peter B. Health Drink.
Wright fell in love with the marlin fishery and fished the reef every season from ’68 till 2008. He employed the heavy tackle and boat-handling tactics he learned chasing giant bluefin in the Bahamas and tallied incredible numbers. Vessels that Wright captained, most notably the 40-foot Duyfken (Dutch for “little dove”), caught more granders than any other in history, including a 1,442-pound black marlin — the largest ever weighed in Australia.
Wherever you found billfish or giant tuna, you’d find Wright. He wrote about offshore fishing, conducted seminars and promoted conservation efforts from Africa to the Outer Banks.
After a good day on the water, Wright liked to enjoy a cocktail he called the “Health Drink” — a tall glass full of ice with tonic water because quinine helps stave off malaria, lime juice and wedges for scurvy, and rum “because it makes it you feel good.” Wright died Jan. 23. He was 79.
