Going through some old tackle I found these two flutter spoons he was using as prototypes for a weedless flutter spoon. He had been talking about trying it for a good while. We were sitting around talking about it and he handed me these two to try out. Brought a smile to my face remembering Mark. Fork still seems different without Pack. These got cleaned up and put away in my collection that I will never part with. Thankful for the time I had getting to know him and for all the good memories. He is missed.

Very cool story.

I was at Lake Fork Marina this weekend and in the entry way to the restaurant is the big pic of Mark that says "Home of Mark Pack". It always brings a smile to my face.

I definitely miss him too and will agree that Fork just isn't the same without him. We did some spooning trips with him and I will never forget his tag line when it came to the spoon:

"The Bread and Butter is in the Flutter"

RIP PacMan

I regret I never took a trip with him. He was a jig master. I would have learned a lot.

Thanks for sharing...another prime example of how cool he was and a legend to the sport of bass fishing.

Mark, I have one of the prototypes of the jig from early on. It was very rough. Like your story, I have the jig set aside for safe keeping. Probably gonna have to wire tie the skirt to keep it on there.

I have a few of those as well. Just need to find them and put them away. He was always tinkering with baits and he was like a savant in that way. Like we said the day he passed, he impacted a bunch of us on a personal level. I know you miss him too and if he was still here he would be pushing you along in your journey.

Ronnie,

I just fun fished with Pack on Fork and other lakes. I can recall on Fork we would be out deep abd he would see me make a cast. He would tell me to make the next cast about 2' to the left or right as there was a stump, laydown etc there and I was not hitting it right. Sure enough I would make that next cast like he said and I would pull through the cover he talked about. This was before FFS too. I think k he knew every inch of tge bottom at Fork by memory.
I would tell him to just fish like I wasn't there in the boat as I wanted to try andcatch fish behind him. It was tough to do as he was a vacuum.

One of my favorite days was a mid November say when he said he knew I liked to fish shallow and had something to show me so he ran me way back into a creek and taught me every single bend and turn of the channel. We spent the day catching some good ones. I caught one about 9lbs on a channel swing pitching a jig. Afew minutes later he sets up on one and to this day I have not seen a bass this big in the water. It came up trying to jump but was too fat. I used to tease Pack that he fished with 80lb flouro whale rope. I figured shortly it would be attge boat and I would lip it for him. Instead it dove into a pile of laydowns and he could not free it. I knew we were only in 3-4' of water so I offered to go in and get it. He wouldn't let me. It was still on and thrashing about and he was heading towards it on the TMwhen his line broke.
He sat down on the front deck to retie and was visibly shaken. He told me we had just seen a teener come off. He was right. That fish was huge. We continued that day and caught a bunch of 5lb plus fish. We were the only boat back in there. Good times. Catching big fish, talking about life and laughing.



Don't even get me started on his one liners in the boat....

I think of Pack often and fished with him 3-4 times.

After our last trip I bought his 2014 FX 21.
It will be my last boat😥

Mark - I am having a blast fishing with my son in law Eric and he is really good fishing with a jig so I pulled out a lot of my bags of jigs I used and made up through the years. He fishes a flipping style of jig mostly and I really like fishing a Swim Jig most of the time. When I was going through my stuff I had a bag of old Swim Jigs and saw that I had quite a few of Mark Pack's Swim Jigs I got the last time I fished with him. We had an awesome day during the shad spawn running around searching shell beds and those bass were crashing the Swim Jigs and would about knock the rod out of your hands. Eric had never really seen the type of weed guards Mark came up with on his jigs and was really liking some of my stories about how inventive Mark was creating the lures he did, including what is still my favorite flipping bait even though it took me years to find the one that really is a perfect copy of the old LFT CrawTube after they discontinued it.

He was a fantastic person and a great guide. I went on several trips with him.

Sounds like a nice guy. Did a search, his site is still up: https://www.markpacklakefork.com/mark.html

Wow, pretty young at 59, speaking as someone 10 years his senior! ;/0

Obit:
https://www.wired2fish.com/news/angler-guide-and-lure-designer-mark-pack-passes-at-59