Padre Island National Seashore and Garner State Park

May 08, 2013

Padre Island National Seashore and Garner State Park

Last week Josh and I took our anual birthday trip. Every year we take off for a week and head into the great outdoors. Its a great time to relax and forget about "real" world for a while. This year our plan was to head to Padre Island National Seashore and try our luck fishing the coast and the bay side. PINS as its called is a 60 mile stretch of beach that starts just south of Corpus Christi and almost reaches South Padre Island. It is The Longest stretch of undeveloped Barrier Island in the world and hosts the endangered Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle.

This is my story.

Hope you enjoy.

The Rig.

We drove in just past the 5 mile marker and set up for the first night.

Sand Chairs.

Going into this, we thought it was going to be a free-for-all. With tailing reds, catching fish left and right with spoons and top water.

We were wrong. The ocean is a delicate ecosystem. If the waters not right, the fish dont bite.

And with the cold fronts moving in and out this year, the fishing was slim to non.

Sam wasn't digging the waves.

The second day my cousin David and your local Sage, Redington and Rio rep met up with us and we head out to mile maker 15 and across to Laguna Madre. Its a little less windy and sandy on the bay so we made that our base camp for the next two days.

Knot tying 101

We had heard of a good fishing spot down the the bay and decided to take a little hike.

No fish. At all. But we found a cool boat.

Sun shade is crucial.

A local fisherman gave us a few dead shrimp he wasn't going to use so we headed back to the gulf side to try it out.

I caught a hard head.

This was the only fish we caught in PINS.

Next time I'll know to bring live bait.

With the truck and all of our gear covered in sand and ocean mist and another storm moving in over night. We decided to head out and find some fishing we understood better. David headed back to Austin and Josh and I headed to Hooters to get a plan together.

Our waitress told us about Garner State Park and after a few clicks on Google we were sold.

We didn't even think to look but we were heading into the same storm we were running from. The rain was heavy and the wind was even heavier. Just glad the tents held up and we weren't stuck on the beach for this one.