Corpusfishing.com

[ltorna1]

Here is a wordy report for anyone curious as to how Packery looks right now with the current surf conditions.

My friend John (recently relocated out of Corpus) was visiting this weekend and was wanting to get his saltwater fishing fix on. We decided to hit north packery yesterday because, well, when you visit from out of town you don't get to cherry pick the nice weather days.

We got out there about 7:30. 'Packery Pond' was there in all its glory, completely surrounding and submerging the legs a big RV against the dunes. The tide had been to the dunes recently so there was very little parking and poor driving due to huge puddles. The surf was huge and breaking over the end of the jetty from both sides. The current was ripping out along the surfside of the north jetty, with a steady chain of surfers using it as a conduit to get out to the nice rolling breakers. This was a shame for us, because despite the big rollers, the wade gut and first gut along the jetty looked really fishy as most of the waves were breaking over the outer bars, leaving a nice clean area to work. I bet there were trout there if we could have fished it without all the the surfers, but this was definitely their day, not ours.

Inside the channel, the tide was ripping in and there was a huge amount of bait. Dusky anchovies and swarms of baby mullet were getting tossed around, the terns and pelicans were taking advantage. Schools of mullet of mixed sizes running straight down the middle of the channel against the incoming tide. Schools of small shad up against the rocks were popping as well.

We fished mainly lures and had a few hits, John hooked up with a red in the channel on a gotcha. On my first toss with a cast net blindly on the surf side hoping for some shad, and instead caught a 14 inch black drum! I'm betting there were more along the surf side of the jetty but again, tough to fish with the surfers, and who can blame them for taking advantage of what looked to be a killer day for them. Shad under a float in the channel was getting consistent bites along the rocks but no solid hookups.

So there ya have it. If you had the time and could grind it out all day, you could probably do well if you waited for the bite to turn on, seeing as how the bait was super abundant. I, on the other hand, will be waiting for the surf to lie down.
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[Blast-n-Cast]

Thanks for the report. A day of fishing...regardless of the outcome always beats a day of working

[iYak]

Glad to hear there was bait in the water Sunday. We set up lights on North Packery Saturday night / Sunday morning, and did not see a single mullet, anchovy, shrimp, etc. Didn't see any fish either unfortunately. It was not a fun night of fishing - rain kept chasing us into our vehicles until 3:00 AM or so. Waves breaking on the rocks got everything nice and damp too. Oh well, at least we were trying...