Brothers are 3 of a kind Fishing guides’ resiliency shows true meaning of family ties Item Staff Writer March 23, 2004 RIMINI — The Pack brothers have proven their resiliency during the past five years. Brothers Joseph Britton “Jody” Pack III, Stevie Pack and Andy Pack have bounced back from the loss of, first, their brother and then their father to continue the family business, Pack’s Landing, started by their grandfather nearly 60 years ago. Bruz Crowson / The Item From left, Andy, Stevie and Jody Pack joke about who caught the striper as they ride on the Santee River recently. The brothers reopened Pack’s Landing after a series of tragic events in their family. The Pack family was shocked by the murder of Tracy Pack in August 1999 by two youths at the Rimini Marine Institute, an educational facility for troubled youth that was housed on land donated by the Pack family. Tracy Pack, 32, had served as a counselor at the camp. In August 2001, two weeks after the family sat in on the sentencing of Stephen T. Hutto, then 17, of Bamberg, and Jon P. Smart, then 16, of Greenville — both received life in prison without parole — the family patriarch, Joseph Britton Pack Jr., died at the age of 61. After their father’s death, the Pack brothers pulled together and reopened the landing in September 2001. Jody Pack, the oldest of the Pack sons at 38, said his grandfather, Joseph Britton Pack Sr., started Pack’s landing in 1946, and both his grandfather and father worked on the railroad with Seaboard Coastline. “He sold produce and he did different odd jobs before he came here, and he also worked for the railroad, as you can see, that’s in our background,” Jody said of the nearby railroad tracks. “He was the fireman of the railroad. When the trains would cross, he would take the little hand pump cart and his job was every time the train went, he followed the train and made sure that the sparks didn’t catch the trestle on fire, and then he’d come back. “He did that and retired with Seaboard Coastline at the time,” he said. “My dad did 13 years with them until they wanted him to move to Jacksonville, Florida, and he decided to stay here and run the landing.” Jody Pack said he and his brothers — Stevie is 33 and Andy is 30 — all have their own role at the landing. “I’m mainly in the store seven days a week during the season, answering the phone and booking the guide trips,” he said. “I’m also a full-time guide, but I’m mostly in the store. Andy and Stevie are generally on the road catching bait most of the time. They live in the bait truck.” “We try and keep the customers happy,” Andy Pack said. “If you don’t have bait, they don’t seem to like that too much when they come down from Charlotte or Greenville or somewhere like that.” “We primarily do our own guiding,” Jody Pack said. “We don’t use outside guides. We’re a family business. We’ve been here since ‘46 and we take our own customers because they want to go with us, so it’s just the three of us that do the guiding.” Jody Pack said that customers talk about seeing the brothers on the water at an early age. Bruz Crowson / The Item The outside of the Pack’s Landing store is seen recently. The Pack brothers’ grandfather founded the landing almost 60 years ago. “We were running outboard motors, six-horsepower Johnsons, at probably 8 or 9 years old in the swamp at Sparkleberry, and people still come in here and talk about it,” he said. “... I started taking guide trips for pay when I was 14 years old, and I’m sure Stevie and Andy did, too. That was before there was such a thing as being a licensed guide.” Jody Pack said that since he and his brothers have been operating the business, they have focused more on commercial guiding for companies. “We do a lot of corporate guides and we all three guide at the same time on those,” he said. “We do specialty trips where we take groups of 12 and we give them an all-inclusive package deal, and we really entertain them. We build a good base doing that.” The Packs specialize in “about everything except for largemouth” and also offer hunting trips — including duck, dove, quail, deer and “whatever we can do out there” — to patrons. “I think for everybody, spring is the hot time,” Stevie Pack said of the upcoming surge in business for the landing. “March, April, May, June, especially for us up here, those four months are critical. We’ve got to do really, really good. “Our guide season has really gotten pretty good year round, but as far as other people fishing on their own, (these months) are primarily when the fish are going on bed, the shellcrackers, your bream, your bass,” he said. “People can find them in the shallows and stuff. Your stripers are coming up from the lower lake, going up the river system to spawn, so we catch them going and coming back in those four months. I think, definitely by far, spring is the best.” While corporate business has been big for the Packs, the brothers said they still do family guiding trips. “We’ve got a few trailers that we can rent out that can accommodate up to 12 people, six per trailer, and they stay fairly booked,” Jody Pack said. The Packs — who hosted a Striped Bass Tournament Trail fishing tournament last weekend and will hold another Trail event, the Tracy Pack Memorial Striped Bass Tournament, May 8 — see a bright future for the family business. “My grandfather started it, and then after him my dad, and now it’s us,” Andy Pack said. “We’re the third generation, and (Jody) has got a little boy and I’ve got a little boy on the way, so hopefully we’re going to keep it right on going.” For more information on Pack’s Landing, log on to www.packslanding.com. To book a fishing or hunting trip with the Packs, call (803) 452-5514 or (803) 452-5521.

© Packs.