BY NOAH GRIFFITH
FOR THE OBSERVER
AUBURN —
“Thank y’all for watchin’. All glory to God. Be positive, just fish.”
This is the line Auburn University junior in marketing, known by those around him as Zuggy, uses to close out every YouTube video. Fishing has taught him to stay positive in hard times after spending a large portion of his childhood in the hospital battling an undiagnosed condition.
Now, he’s passing that on to thousands across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
“Positivity is such an important thing. It really can make or break someone’s day and change their outlook on life,” Zuggy said. “A huge part of my channel is to help people in that sense and bring a light to their day. Ultimately, that light that I can bring that day — hopefully that leads people to the forever light of God.”
It all started in 2017, when people in his hometown of Mountainside, New Jersey, began asking about his fishing adventures.
“They were like, ‘Zuggy, Zuggy, you gotta start a YouTube channel,’” Zuggy recalled. “I was like: ‘alright, fine.’”
Not expecting much out of it, he went to YouTube that night and hit the “publish channel” button. Then, he hopped in the car with his family and rode about 18 hours down to Florida for vacation and filmed his first videos. After a handful of “cringe” videos, his posts simmered out — until the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zuggy hit 1,000 subscribers in two days from people in his community following him, but that number stayed relatively constant until he started back posting in March 2020, when he got up to 100,000 followers on TikTok. Now, he is sitting at over 83,000 subscribers on YouTube with around 250,000 followers on TikTok.
While he said he is grateful for the opportunity a following provides him to make a difference and document his life, it has never been about clout or popularity. It’s his love for fishing that got things started, and it has never faded.
Despite the disappointment of not being able to play sports in his childhood like the kids around him, his dad introduced him to fishing at 3-years-old, and he was “hooked.” The goal in sharing his experiences is to help others find that same joy.
“I’ve always told myself: ‘If this was about getting followers — if that was my goal, I would’ve quit a long time ago.’ I had the same number of followers for the first two years,” Zuggy said. “Fishing is just such a great way to bond with others and have fun. It gets you outside, you can do it at any age, it can be very relaxing or a great adrenaline rush at the same time.”
Since making the journey to Auburn from New Jersey in 2021, his fishing journey has expanded through new people and places. Zuggy is now part of the Auburn University Bass Fishing team, and he continues to post several times throughout the week on all platforms. Not only has he been able to make connections on the team and around Auburn, he’s made some memorable videos on the Plains.
From filming a video with Auburn basketball star Dylan Cardwell and helping him catch his first fish last April, to killing and eating a python in Florida and then spending nine days in the hospital with bacterial pneumonia, to catching a 300-pound “Goliath Grouper,” his time at Auburn has been just as much about impacting lives and making memories as it has been about fishing.
“That was such an awesome day out on the water getting Dylan his first fish,” Zuggy said. “He was super hyped. We had some laughs and talked about his testimony as well. Really, really cool video.”
Ironically, even as he’s gained a following and had videos get millions of views, many people couldn’t tell you his real name. In his social media handles, he is under the name Zuggy and has become known as Zuggy Fishing. His name is Ryan Diskin, but his dad gave him the nickname before he could talk, and it just stuck.
“The way my dad explains it to me is, when I was little, there was this one Nissan car commercial that I really liked that went ‘Zoom, zoom zoom.’ I wasn’t old enough to pronounce it really well, so I would say ‘zug’ instead of ‘zoom,’” Zuggy said. “People I’ve known for years don’t even know my real name is Ryan. I never say it in my videos. Zuggy is just what everyone calls me.”
His dad gave him the name, but he also helped set the example of how powerful positivity can be.
Another doctor’s appointment. Another surgery. More confusion. That was a lot of his childhood, but his parents stayed strong through it all. His dad played a big part in teaching him to keep an optimistic mindset and got him involved in fishing — two things that changed his life.
To this day, the doctors don’t know what causes the fluid leaking to his brain — the best they can do is put in a stint to stop it. Even so, he keeps smiling through it all.
“Stay positive, just fish” is his motto, and he gives God the credit for allowing him to live that out every day.
“Jesus saved my life, and I glorify his name through these videos,” Zuggy said. “That’s the number one reason why I do this at the end of the day.”