Celebrity Interview - Adriano Pellegrino - Fishing with the A-League

Keen Fisherman and Perth Glory Star

Exclusive FishMax Interview

If you follow the A-League Football (soccer), you’ll know that Adrian Pellegrino is Perth Glory’s right midfielder, but did you know he’s also a keen fisherman?

Pellegrino, who represented Australia as a member of the Under 20 team that qualified for the 2003 FIFA World Youth Championship, kicking a ball at a very early age, and he started fishing young as well. “I remember my dad taking me fishing for European Carp off the Murray Bridge (two hours north of Adelaide), when I was only four and half years old” Adrian told us.

Pellegrino has many great stories of fishing off the coast of South Australia and he also tells us with affection about a 9 kilo snapper he took off Edithburgh, South Australia. And its not just catching them that he enjoys.

While he assures us that he is careful never to take more than he can eat straight away, “I’ll take home enough home to eat for dinner that night but then it is definitely  release the rest” he tells us, Pellegrino loves eating fresh fish. Like so many South Australian fishermen, Pellegrino’s favourite seafood dish is King George Whiting, “slightly battered in corn flower, lemon juice with salt and pepper” he says with a smile.

Adrian’s even willing to share a hot South Australian fishing tip with FishMax readers “If you are fishing for King George Whiting off Edithburgh,” he says with a laugh, “ use squid tentacles for bait with a single long shank hook and a small running sinker off the ground at the front of the light house!”

While fishing in South Australia holds special memories for him, Pellegrino’s all time favourite fishing spot is in the state he now calls home. Perhaps one of the reasons his club peers voted him “Most Glorious Player” in 2008/2009?

“Definitely Exmouth,Western Australia” Adrian told FishMax in response to our question about his favourite fishing spot . And its Exmouth that gives Adrian his favourite fishing story, having landed a 140 kilo blue Marlin, “it took 2 hours to catch” he says.

Pellegrino laments that his commitments to football don’t allow him to get fishing nearly often enough. In response to our question about how often he gets a line wet, he answers “Nowhere near as much as I would like to during the A-League season but I do try and make up for it in the off the season especially when I go home back to Adelaide to visit my family.” When he is an Adelaide “Its job on” he says, “I fish probably two to three times [a week], and if I’m down at the holiday shack in Edithburgh then its daily.”

Words: Stevo Perry Pics: Perth Glory