Packery Channel Damage Report

 Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

Adventure Date: 11-26-2020

Click the pic to enlarge it.

The day did not go anywhere close to the plan when we hit the sack last night. But it turned out to be very valuable to the Teams so it was a good thing.

The OFM Teams ended up going to Port Aransas on Mustang Island to check out the status of the campgrounds there. We happened to hit the ferry  area on the day they were changing the ferry waiting lanes. They were doing an excellent job of it but it was still a mess since sinage was not all up yet.

As we meandered Port Aransas it was obvious that all the campgrounds were full to running over as well as very high priced.

Ok then what next. Well it has been a year since we were at a favorite fishing location named Packery Channel, so we headed down the island to check it out. It was a very fortunate happening as you will see.

When we got there we notice a few nice improvements at the boat ramp area you have to pass through. Hmm nice we thought. We headed on down the road to the shore fishing/ picnic area.  Oh my goodness what happened?

Apparently the wave action in the channel has washed away a lot of the shore protection along the channel and lots of serious damage is happening. We got Sierra parked and went on foot to see what is going on. We will only show a couple of spots but this style of damage is happening all along the shore fishing area. 

There is still enough of the shore line in good enough shape to fish there but it is changing fast it looks like to the OFM. Here is a picture of the opposite shore to show what is happening in general.

On the Mustang Island side here is a couple of pictures of two places as examples of the type of troubles.  There is several more spots with severe trouble, these are just two examples.

We walked across this “suspension” sidewalk going and coming.  The soil has totally washed out from under a 20 foot +/- section of the walkway.

Back in the parking lot is a section of the walkway AND the parking lot falling in. The first picture is from the parking lot side. The second is from the channel side of the trouble spot. What a mess!

This is a real loss to the shore fishing folks and picnic folks who normally walk and play along the waterway on these troubled spots.

The people who were down in the area were not generally wearing masks when clustered together nor making any attempt at distancing. So careful care was taken by the OFM to keep extra distance from most of the folks down there and it was a big turn out today for sure.

It seems that Mustang Island has gotten way too crowded for the OFM Teams as a place for trying to have tooooo much fun.