Port Mansfield

Fred Stone Park pier

One of the few publicly accessible fishing piers reaching the Lower Laguna Madre. The Texas General Land Office records a two-phase project: Phase 1 addressed pier reconstruction and was nearly complete at the time of writing, and Phase 2 covered construction following engineering design, funded at $335,000 in county money and built to ADA compliance. The park supports fishing, hunting, birdwatching, crab trapping, beachcombing and kayaking, with Gulf access via the Port Mansfield Gulf Channel. Length, lighting, fee and hours are not published; the harbor is run by the Willacy County Navigation District, which is who to ask.

The "New Fishing Pier"

A local guide refers to a New Fishing Pier as a Port Mansfield gathering spot. This is almost certainly the rebuilt Fred Stone pier under an informal name, but we cannot confirm they are the same structure and we would rather flag the ambiguity than invent a second pier in a town of 132 people.

Mansfield Pass jetties (the East Cut)

Construction began in September 1957 and the channel was restored, meaning the works completed, in July 1962. In 1962 the Army Corps built the jetty system: granite breakwaters extending 580 yards and 825 yards from Padre Island into the Gulf of Mexico, with 315 yards between them for vessel passage. In feet that is roughly 1,740 and 2,475, short by Texas standards, and worth stating in feet because every other jetty on this coast is quoted that way. The rock is granite; the quarry is not documented and we do not guess at it. Access is the defining difficulty. There is no road to the Mansfield jetties from the mainland. The south jetty is boat-only. The north jetty can be reached on foot, but only after a roughly 60-mile drive down the beach through Padre Island National Seashore, where the Park Service strongly recommends four-wheel drive and warns that beach driving conditions change quickly with weather, tides and location. A predicted high tide of 1.5 ft or greater can cover the beach completely in places, which makes the trip inadvisable, and cell service is unreliable the whole way. Shoaling is the chronic problem. The system was designed for resiliently controlling coastal sediment transport, longshore drift and shoaling, and it has repeatedly shoaled to the point of restricting Gulf access. There is no published figure we can cite for the authorized or current controlling depth, which is exactly the number you want before you run the cut; ask locally. The full waterway measures 15.3 km, about 9.5 miles.

Port Mansfield nearshore reef artificial reef

A TPWD nearshore site seven nautical miles southeast of the jetties in 70 ft of water, built from a tugboat and 5,000 concrete culverts. Juvenile sailfish and red snapper have been observed on it. UT Brownsville has studied this site along with Port Isabel and the Texas Clipper.

Port Mansfield Liberty Ship Reef liberty ship reef

Three 440-ft 1940s-era Liberty ships, the site established in the 1970s by the TPWD Artificial Reef Program, lying in 90 to 105 ft of water with the ships giving 10 to 20 ft of relief. Four decommissioned oil platform jackets rise to as much as 60 ft of relief across nine positions. The description above comes from the diving community; TPWD publishes a dedicated brochure for the reef which is the document that would settle the details. The individual ship names are not identified by any source we can read, and we do not publish a site code for it. Note the naming trap: despite the name, this reef is fished and dived mostly out of Port Isabel and South Padre rather than Port Mansfield, because of the East Cut's shoaling, and it is normally reached through Brazos Santiago Pass.

Santa Maria de Yciar wreck

One of the three ships of the 1554 plate fleet lost on Padre Island, destroyed in the 1950s by the dredging of the Port Mansfield Channel. There is nothing left to fish; it is here because the East Cut is what replaced her, and because the 1967 salvage of her sister wrecks began when a General Land Office official spotted a sunken Spanish ship near Port Mansfield.

Lower Laguna Madre

Weight Records · Rod & Reel · All-Ages

Weight Records · Fly Fishing · All-Ages

Weight Records · Bow Fishing · All-Ages

Weight Records · Rod & Reel · Junior Angler

Weight Records · Fly Fishing · Junior Angler

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

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