About me

From the lakes to the sea

I started like a lot of children, in the small lakes in the hills of Emilia where I grew up. Then the rivers, with my father and my uncle, and spinning for trout up the streams: everything I learned in fresh water I took with me to the sea. The sea came on holiday, in Cervia and Milano Marittima, on the boats that take people out for mackerel. From then on I never stopped.

Sardinia and the first RIB

In 1989 I was a swimming instructor and a lifeguard, I had my diving licence, and I was asked to go to Sardinia to test some underwater equipment. The sea was rough and the test never happened, but I discovered a place near Olbia called Porto Ottiolu. I didn’t know it yet, but that’s the place that made me who I am.

In 1990 I got married and bought my first RIB: three metres, fifteen horsepower. I used to go to Castiglione della Pescaia with my niece to catch conger and white bream, and I realised I liked it for real. Then came a RIB of four metres twenty, then one of four fifty, and from 1991 Sardinia every summer: light trolling, dolphinfish, bonito and spinning with lures, which I was already doing on the rivers.

Why Prosciuttino

At Porto Ottiolu a big game champion invited me to a tournament, the Grand Slam. At registration they asked for a name. I gave mine, and that wasn’t it. I tried the RIB’s name, then my friends’ names: nothing. They wanted the team’s name, and I didn’t have a team: I was just there with my friends. They made the team for me, and they chose the name too: Prosciuttino, little ham. Because in the evening, among friends, I’d get out the slicer and the prosciutto and make crescentine, the little breads from my hills, for everyone.

At my first tournament, two days of competition, I took a first and a second place. That’s where it all started. I went back to Ottiolu ten years in a row: dentex, amberjack, tuna, John Dory, dolphinfish, bonito. I’m still missing the grouper. I had one on the line, and I lost it.

Tyrrhenian, Liguria, Adriatic

After Sardinia I moved around: the coast from Monterosso to Punta Ala, Marina di Pisa, Gorgona, the island of Elba with an old friend. Then one day someone told me to try the Adriatic. At a boat show they invited me to give it a go, I ended up in Porto Barricata, in the Po delta, and met a lot of people. Almost by chance I found myself in the Italian championships, and I fished the whole Adriatic: from Chioggia, with trips out towards Croatia, all the way down to Vieste. Porto Barricata, Porto Garibaldi, Goro. A stretch of coast I’ve fished from end to end.

Romagna, today

A few months before Covid I sold my last RIB, a Flyer 575. Then a friend asked me to go fishing with him in Cesenatico, and there I found my sea: the area between Cesenatico and Ravenna, where I go out most often these days. I’ve been drifting for tuna since 1992 and I’ve never closed a year without catching one. Since 2025 I’ve been an AIGUPP fishing guide, the Italian association of professional fishing guides, member ITA 284/25, an active guide with the association’s quality certification. It was suggested by someone who had watched me fish. I’ve had my boat licence since the late eighties, before I even got married.

What I really love

Spinning and trolling, slow or fast, are my kind of fishing. Amberjack and dentex have fascinated me forever. Tuna even more: no two are the same, you expect one to feed one way and it feeds another, and every time there’s something to learn. But what I love most is taking someone out and showing them how it’s done. Every trip is a different day, and being out at sea in good company is always a pleasure.