Matagorda & Sargent

Matagorda Bay Nature Park (LCRA)

Operated by the Lower Colorado River Authority. The park has a fishing pier, boat ramp, swimming areas, kayak rentals, flushing restrooms, showers, a gift shop, Wi-Fi and the Redfish Hall event space. Open daily sunrise to sunset. Entry is $5 for adults, free for children 12 and under, $2 for seniors 65 and over, military and disabled visitors, and free with an LCRA Parks Pass. LCRA publishes no pier length. Beach restoration work near the park is expected to produce intermittent noise through early 2027.

Jetty Park (Matagorda County)

County park at the very end of the road, where the Colorado River meets the Gulf. There is no usage fee. Paved parking plus beach parking, restrooms, covered picnic tables and trash cans; camping is permitted. Outdoor rinse showers are also described on site. Anglers use it to launch kayaks, work the river and surf-fish between the jetties.

Matagorda Harbor

Opened in 1990 with the Mouth of the Colorado River Project. Roughly 250 vehicle and trailer spaces serve the public ramps and launching is free. Eight overnight transient slips sit on the quay wall with 30/50-amp power and municipal water, and there are pump-out and oil and filter recycling stations. From here you can reach East and West Matagorda Bays, the Colorado River and the Gulf through the jetties.

Sargent - "Little Stubby"

A pier project begun in 2017 was underfunded and produced a short structure locals call "Little Stubby." No published figure exists for its length, and no authoritative page states its owner or current status. Treat it as a local curiosity rather than a planned destination until that changes.

Colorado River (Matagorda) jetties

The federal project "Mouth of the Colorado River, TX" includes a 2,600-foot East Jetty built to address shoaling. Project channel dimensions are an entrance channel 15 feet deep by 200 feet wide, a navigation channel 12 by 100 feet running 6.5 miles, and a diversion channel 20 by 250 feet running 3.1 miles, authorized under Senate Document 102, 90th Congress, 2nd Session. The 1992 redesign of the West Matagorda Bay jetty consumed 50,000 tons of granite in 10-to-16-ton blocks plus 30,000 tons of 1-to-3-ton rip-rap — about 80,000 tons — to narrow the channel's flow and clear silt after the river was returned to its original Gulf entrance. Jetty fish here are redfish, speckled trout, black drum and seasonal Spanish mackerel, with sheepshead and flounder on the rocks; early morning and dusk are the productive windows. Wear grippy shoes: the granite is slick, and the current between the walls is a river current on top of a tide.

Mitchell's Cut

Mitchell's Cut is described as the only pass between Freeport and Matagorda Bay, and it is the working route for offshore fishing and shrimping out of Sargent. Beyond that, the record is thin: there is no citable source for its construction date, dredged dimensions or maintenance history. It is a small, current-driven cut, and it should be run on local knowledge and a current chart rather than on anything published here.

Sargent Beach revetment

Not a jetty in the fishing sense, but the dominant hard structure on this beach. The Corps installed a granite breakwater revetment in the early 1990s to slow erosion threatening the Intracoastal Waterway. Sargent Beach experiences some of the highest rates of erosion on the Texas coast, and CIRP studies in 2012 and 2013 recommended a ten-breakwater demonstration project. Rock in the surf holds bait and holds fish; it also holds line.

Matagorda Nearshore Reef (BA-439) artificial reef

TPWD announced this site in August 2015: 160 acres in 60 feet of water, built with 2,400 three-sided concrete pyramids 8 feet tall on 10-foot bases, at a cost of $3,552,398 funded through the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment. NOAA's damage-assessment program describes the same 60-foot site receiving 1,600 pyramids, scheduled to follow the Freeport deployment, with work on the Texas projects beginning in December 2016. TPWD's own nearshore FAQ table still lists the Matagorda site as 70 feet deep, 8 nautical miles out, 160 acres and "None deployed" - stale relative to the deployment news. Treat depth, distance and pyramid count as approximate and conflicting.

Freeport Nearshore Reef (BA-336, George Vancouver site) nearshore reef

The neighboring nearshore site up the beach, useful context for anyone running east out of Mitchell's Cut. The legacy reef was established in 1976 around the Liberty ship George Vancouver; the 2015 program expanded it from 40 to 160 acres in 55 feet of water at a cost of $2,155,365.

Freeport Liberty Ship Reef (GA-A-22) liberty ship reef

Holds the Liberty ship V.A. Fogg in three sections, plus several four-pile jackets and 300 coal-ash blocks. Outside this region's boundary but the closest big-ship structure to the Matagorda-Sargent run, and the standard long day out of Freeport.

Program context - Texas nearshore reefing artificial reef

TPWD lists seven nearshore reef sites within nine nautical miles of shore coast-wide and holds 68 USACE reef-building permits. The standard site size is 160 acres. That is the frame the Matagorda pyramid field sits in — a small, repeatable footprint placed inside day-trip range of a trailer boat.

Matagorda Bay

Weight Records · Rod & Reel · All-Ages

Weight Records · Fly Fishing · All-Ages

Weight Records · Rod & Reel · Junior Angler

Catch and Release Records (by length) · Rod & Reel · All Ages

Catch and Release Records (by length) · Fly Fishing · All Ages

Catch and Release Records (by length) · Rod & Reel · Junior Angler