Paul Castronovo loves fishing. So does his son, his friends, many of those who listen to the Paul Castronovo Show on iHeartRadio’s BIG 105.9, and most of all, his wife. She loves the peace and quiet at home while he’s out on the boat. “I use fishing like a lot of people use golf, to get away from my wife because I drive her completely crazy, especially since I’ve been working from home,” Castronovo says laughing. “Some days I’ll walk out in the back yard and she’s loading the rods in the boat, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ She’s trying to get rid of me! But all kidding aside, it is my relaxation. It’s my hobby.”
That seems like a description that echoes the sentiment of most fishermen. Yes, fish make for a healthy, nourishing meal, and there’s a lot of money involved when the big one is caught in a tournament, but it’s getting out in the fresh air, being out on the water, spending time alone or with friends that gives one a well-deserved break and time to unwind from everyday life.
Castronovo has been on the radio for more than 30 years with stints from Florida to Alabama to Tennessee and back again in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area where his talk show airs weekday mornings on WBGG. He started as a DJ on ROCK 104 as a student at the University of Florida in Gainesville and moved around the dial including the original WSHE in South Florida, Orlando’s WHTQ, WZZR in Birmingham, and Nashville’s WGFX. In 1990, he came back to South Florida and WSHE, teaming with a newsman he barely knew, “Young” Ron Brewer. The “Paul & Young Ron Show” became a mainstay in morning talk radio until 2016. Beyond the radio, Castronovo appeared on screen in the movies The Awakened and the documentary Skum Rocks as well as an episode of Airport 24/7: Miami, a series about the Miami International Airport. Now the namesake for the “Paul Castronovo Show,” with co-hosts Heather and Mike, he has renewed his “top-ranked morning show with listeners ages 25 to 54” with iHeartRADIO for another five years. He has told many a story of his fishing exploits on the show and is an avid fisherman who enjoys every moment he’s out on the water, even if the big one gets away.
“I’ll never forget it,” he begins. “I actually have two, but the one that sticks out the most is when I was fishing in Panama at the Tropic Star Lodge, which is the holy grail of fishing. The captain said there was a school of porpoises about five miles away and they swim with the giant yellowfin tuna in the one hundred/one hundred-fifty-pound range. We got to them and sure enough, I hooked a giant yellowfin tuna. I fought it for an hour. When we could finally see the fish, it was holding below the boat, about thirty-forty feet below, and as I was reeling it up, someone said, ‘Oh my God!’ I said, ‘What?’ And they told me, ‘Just keep reeling, just keep reeling!’ My buddy leans over and says, ‘There’s a giant mako shark below the boat.’ I invested an hour or so and nearly killed myself trying to reel this fish in, and that shark finally came up and ate it like a potato chip right in front of me. Talk about heartbreak and dejection. It’s funny because it happened on my boat a decade earlier in the Miami Dolphins’ fishing tournament. My friend, Kevin, hooked a giant yellowfin tuna, about a hundred pounds, and fought it for an hour, and lost it right next to the boat. The line just popped, and we watched it sit there for a second, and we’re like, ‘What do we do?’ and he just swam away. You know, sometimes the fish win, but boy, you know it’s funny, and I knew. He didn’t say another word the whole day, and I didn’t understand why he was so upset until it happened to me.”