Lifetime Achievement Award - Mr. Zyg Gregorek
Mr. Zyg Gregorek becomes PGFA’s first Honorary Lifetime Member and receives the PGFA Lifetime Achievement Award for services rendered to sportfishing.
Zyg’s story and angling exploits are beyond compare, likely never to be repeated by any other angler in the sport. He is widely acknowledged as the world’s greatest angler. Today, at the age of 65 he still carries on catching monster fish after fish in exotic locations across the world. Despite his tremendous achievements he is an extremely modest and helpful person, and is gifted with a fantastic sense of humor. He is a man who enriches the life of those who have had the privilege of fishing with him.
A few facts about Zyg Gregorek:
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The IGFA has six royal slam cups/awards. A royal slam requires an angler to catch all the IGFA recognized species in each category. Thus bagging a specimen of each target species of marlin, for example, qualifies as a ‘Royal Slam’. Mr. Gregorek is the first person to claim a full house of royal slams since records began to be maintained by the IGFA in the 1950s.
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Zyg achieved the impossible by successfully catching all ten game species of billfish, nine species of shark, and eight species of tuna that are recognized by the IGFA. His quest has taken 18 years and 150,000 miles across the world to locations such as South Africa, Australia, Mauritius, the Galápagos islands, the United States, Madeira, the Ascension Islands, Mozambique and of course to Pakistan.
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He completed this incredible task and pinnacle of big game fishing achievements when off San Diego he landed a 200lb thresher shark. Zyg had been pursuing this species since 2004.
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He was awarded his Shark Royal Slam by the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) for landing specimens of Blue, Hammerhead, Mako, Thresher, Tiger, Great White, Tope, Whaler and Porbeagle sharks.
Zyg’s passion is shark fishing; a discipline in which he is the world’s foremost authority. He started his pursuit of sharks in 1996 in British waters catching a blue shark off Cornwall and later a tope and porbeagle off Devon.
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Two of his worldwide shark catches were over 1000 lbs - a 1300 lb great white in Struis Bay off S. Africa, and an 1100 lb
tiger shark off Cairns, Australia.
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He is only the second man on record to catch all nine species of shark and the only person in history to catch three different species of shark over 1,000lb.
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Besides the thresher, the IGFA’s Shark Royal Slam consists of eight other shark species including hammerhead, blue, mako, tiger, white, tope, whaler, and porbeagle.
- Zyg’s fascination with sharks did not deter him from pursuing all the other species of big game fish with equal zeal and all were eventually to fall to Zyg’s incredible angling skill.
The Billfish Royal Slam recognizes anglers catching, or catching and releasing nine species within the angler’s lifetime. These include Atlantic and Pacific sailfish, Atlantic and Pacific blue marlin, black marlin, striped marlin, white marlin, swordfish, and spearfish. Zyg has completed this Royal Slam not once, but as he confirmed in a recent email to us, twice!
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The IGFA’s Tuna Royal Slam consists of an Atlantic or Pacific bigeye, blackfin, bluefin, dogtooth, longtail, skipjack, southern bluefin, and yellowfin tunas. Zyg has completed the Tuna Royal Slam as well. The longtail tuna required was caught at Churna Island, Pakistan – The country in which he was born.
Rob Kramer, president of the IGFA, hailed Mr Gregorek as “the world’s greatest fisherman” and described him as “totally unique”. He said: “There are many awards out there for fishermen and anyone can throw in a line, get lucky and pull out a record-breaking fish but this is something else. To achieve one royal slam is impressive but to get all three is unheard of. He is the first and may be the last. These awards really are the considered the big one, the Holy Grail. They are spectacular — traveling to exotic places and chasing a specific species of fish. “It is not about luck — you have to research, to know exactly where to go and when. Zyg is a character and by definition he is the world’s greatest fisherman.”
Zyg lives in the United Kingdom, where he runs one of the country’s premier angling resorts “Angler’s Paradise” with his family. He participates in numerous charities benefiting people all over the world, the most recent of which was his substantial contribution to PGFA flood relief activities in Pakistan, for which he held a raffle amongst UK’s anglers to raise funds.
We can do little better than by ending this announcement with Ziggy’s own words upon receiving PGFA lifetime achievement award, and upon becoming our first Honorary Lifetime Member:
"I am delighted to become the first Honorary Lifetime Member of the PGFA, and accept the PGFA Lifetime Achievement Award, for services rendered to Sportfishing.
It has been a long road from my time as a refugee born in Karachi and I consider it a great honor. I would like to thank you, the PGFA members, for your warm hospitality showed to me on my last visit to Karachi. It is good to see the club growing from strength to strength and wish it continued success in the future. I am always willing to help in any way I can.
I believe fishing is one of the closest communications with nature, to be able see it's hidden displays which the average man can only dream of whether at sea, lake or river as we participate in one of the greatest pastimes in the World and see the wonders of nature, such as having a dance with a Pilot Whale, Sea Lions skinning it's prey, Turtles playing leapfrog in both the Atlantic and Pacific, Or in Freshwater Giant Otters, Hippos, Elephant and Crocodiles, or even a Kingfisher perched on my rod at Anglers Paradise. It is always the element of the unknown and the joy of catching cannot be described.
Best Fishes
Zyg