PACK Outing Trip Report – We Made the Cut

PACK Armada made its annual outing to PINS / Yarborough this past weekend.  Friday morning, 10 am the Armada rendezvoused at the Malaquite Visitor Center.  After roll call we made our way down to Yarborough, we were able to run two-wheel drive all the way to Yarborough.  We looked/surveyed/walked the pass and decided more than one vehicle wasn’t going to make it, the decision was made to travel down the beach 60 miles to the Mansfield Jetty.  We had a second group that had traveled down Thursday, our plan was to meet up with them either at Yarborough or further down the beach.  This was a 4x4 outing/adventure and it had its challenges

·         Flipped a trailer with yak and gear– nobody hurt, things that were broken can either be repaired or replaced

·         Transmission – Spuds Hummer had transmission problems, had to turn around, hopping he would make it back to Corpus/Houston

·         3 vehicles stuck in sand – Armada made it all the way down to the Jetty’s, stuck two vehicles Friday, one Sunday, all at the camp locations.

·         Low gas – Friday had to run the beach 40 miles 4x4 in deep sand, all of us burned half a tank just getting down the beach.  We only had one 5 gallon jerry-can of spare gas between the group.  There were doubts that we had enough gas to run the same beach sand conditions back Sunday morning.  We all made it back to Malaquite on fumes.

Note:  Water conditions the whole weekend, surf flat, water blue/green to the beach, Wind 15 mph.  Fishing conditions do not get any better than this.

While running down the beach at Big Shell, we spot two large balls of anchovies, one just beyond the third bar, the other another 100 yards further out.  Every bird on PINS was feasting on these anchovies.  This was not a good time to be an anchovy.  Predator fish were busting the two schools of anchovies.  You could see large sharks, porpoise on the surface, along with jackfish busting the anchovies.  Out came the rods, in 5 minutes one black tip was hooked/landed, along with several skipjacks.  We had all seen over the years balls of bait fish being busted by birds, or predator fish; none of us had ever seen anything like this.  The decision was to move on down the beach to meet up with the second group.  The vote to move on was not unanimous.  We made it down to the Mansfield Jetty’s where we did rendezvous with the second group.  Eli indicated he had found two possible camp locations, one at the base of the jetty, the other further down from the jetty that was on flat grass with an easy yak launch.  Half the group drove their vehicles to the grass location.  One vehicle returned from the grass location and reported that this was going to be where we would make camp.  That vehicle turned around with the balance of the vehicles following, they get stuck where they had just passed over, a second vehicle following had to come to a stop also got stuck.  Two hours later, both vehicles were freed resulting in two camp locations.

Fishing:  Everyone caught fish.  Trout/Reds/Skipjacks.  The ratio of Skipjacks to Trout was 5-1.  There is no shortage of Skipjacks.  Everyone went their own way to scout the area with their yaks, we paddled out beyond the Jetty’s, Tarpon were seen but not jumped.  We paddled back towards Mansfield and fished the cuts back to the flats.  It really didn’t matter what time of day it was; incoming tide or outgoing, the fish were there.  In the late afternoon, camp-one on the Jetty wade fished a pocket at the base of the camp; every cast was either a Skipjack or a Trout.  Camp-two on the grass broke out the fly rods and had the same results.

Wildlife:  Lots of birds, at night we were visited by coyotes and raccoons.  Saturday the plan was to have a group meal of hamburgers.  We discovered that the vehicle that had the hamburger buns had been raided Friday night by the raccoons.  Lesson learned: do not leave a window open; the critters will find the food.  The raccoons had eaten the buns but didn’t touch the Lays Potato Chips, go figure?.  Our neighbor campers donated hamburger buns for our group meal.  Thank you camp neighbors.

Sunday, it was decided to break camp early and run the water line back to Malaquite at low tide, run two wheel drive conserving gas, avoid deep sand wherever possible.  We formed a convey, as the Armada departed camp-one, the trail vehicle got stuck, lucky for us we were able to get it out with the tow strap.  We ran the beach water line all the way to Malaquite in 2 wheel drive with no further happenings.

After this adventure it was proposed that we change PACK name to:  PACK 4x4

The few, the proud, We made the Cut.

A good time was had by all.

Pictures to follow