Port O'Connor

King Fisher Beach pier

Port O'Connor's public shore-fishing comes down to the jetty and the King Fisher Beach pier. A separate account describes a public beach with a lighted pier at the east end of town. Length, ownership and hours have no published source — go and look rather than plan around a figure.

Seadrift Bayfront Fishing Pier

Built in 2013: 300 feet long with a 50-foot T-head, with handicap parking, concrete walkways, a timbered railing and lighting throughout. It was funded by the Coastal Impact Assistance Program through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, drawn from 2007–2010 offshore oil and gas revenue; Calhoun County was one of 18 Texas counties funded. Urban Engineering of Victoria designed it, and interpretive signage on San Antonio Bay was planned.

Lighthouse Beach, Port Lavaca

Public park on Lavaca Bay with a fishing pier, splash pad, playground and boat ramp; restrooms at the adjacent Bauer Community Center. Parking is free and the beach area is open 24 hours. The Formosa Wetlands Walkway, a long wooden boardwalk over the water, connects to the Alcoa Birding Tower on the Calhoun Loop birding trail. The relocated Halfmoon Reef Lighthouse of 1858 stands nearby with accessible grounds. No published pier length.

Indianola bayfront

Indianola today is a small unincorporated fishing village, and local pages reference bayfront fishing access. No authoritative source gives a pier name, length or owner, so none is stated here. What is documented is the drowned townsite offshore and the 1963 historic landmark marker.

Port O'Connor jetties / Matagorda Ship Channel

The Matagorda Ship Channel was cut through the peninsula between 1962 and 1966 to let ocean-going vessels move between the Gulf and Matagorda Bay, and it forms part of the Port of Port Lavaca-Point Comfort under the Calhoun Port Authority. Channel length is given as 2.00 miles; maximum vessel size is 810 feet length overall, 138-foot beam, 50-foot draft. There is no published figure for the jetty length in feet — TPWD's statewide jetty feature names Port O'Connor among the Texas jetty systems but publishes lengths only for Galveston, where 35,587 feet makes the Guinness-listed longest jetties on earth. Texas jetties generally produce speckled trout, redfish and drum, with snook, king mackerel, tarpon, cobia and juvenile snappers as bonus catches. Wear felt-soled wading boots for rock-walking because of the algae; start your engine before you free an anchor, and use an anchor you are willing to lose on rock.

Pass Cavallo

One of five natural inlets between the Gulf and Matagorda Bay. La Salle established the first French settlement in Texas here in 1684 and La Belle passed through in 1686. It was a Civil War port of entry, later captured by Union forces during the blockade of Texas, and the Matagorda Island Lighthouse was originally built here. Modern shoaling and depth figures, and the effect of the ship channel on the pass, have no citable published source — the pass is unjettied, it moves, and it is widely treated as a boat-handling hazard. Read it on the day.

Port O'Connor Paddling Trail

A 40-mile paddling trail crossing Espiritu Santo and Matagorda Bays. Espiritu Santo Bay itself is a 16-mile-long, 5-mile-wide northeastern extension of San Antonio Bay, separated from Matagorda Bay by the barrier islands running south from Port O'Connor to Matagorda Island; the bottom is oyster reef, mud, sand and shell and it is part of the Guadalupe River estuary system. Its deeper water holds redfish, trout and flounder. Paddlers routinely encounter stingrays along with dolphins, wading birds and sea turtles.

Matagorda Island Liberty Ship Reef (MI-616) liberty ship reef

Three Liberty ships: Dwight L. Moody, George Dewey and Jim Bridger. The SS Dwight L. Moody was an EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship laid down 4 March 1943 and launched 28 June 1943 by J.A. Jones Construction at Panama City, Florida. She was laid up in reserve in 1946, transferred to Texas in 1975 for reefing, and sunk on 6 April 1976 at 28 06 58 N, 96 05 14 W alongside her sisters. This is the closest big-steel structure to POC and the standard first offshore stop.

"Keeping It Wild" nearshore reef artificial reef

CCA Texas created the Port O'Connor nearshore reefing site, originally a 160-acre permit funded with $100,000 from CCA's Habitat Today for Fish Tomorrow program covering permitting, surveys, lease and the USACE permit, targeted at TPWD fiscal 2014. Deployment began at the end of April 2017 with 500 concrete pyramids in a 381-acre Gulf site, funded at $1 million - $400,000 from Building Conservation Trust, $200,000 from CCA Texas and $400,000 from TPWD. A year later it was reported as about 381 acres with roughly 700 pyramids, some donated by Shell Oil, with bottom depths reaching 20 feet, monitored by the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation. The sources conflict — 160 versus 381 acres, 500 versus 700 pyramids — so treat the figures as approximate. Species observed on it: red snapper, gray triggerfish, lane snapper, greater amberjack, pigfish, pinfish, Atlantic croaker, Atlantic spadefish, whiting and hardhead catfish.

Matagorda Island A-7 artificial reef

The MI-A-7 four-pile jacket, base and top, reefed in place. Deep structure at the outer edge of a long day out of POC.

Brazos A-132 artificial reef

The BA-A-132 eight-pile jacket. Two hundred feet of water over a full-size platform jacket — the deepest of the standard POC runs in TPWD's summary.

Brazos A-28 artificial reef

Three four-pile jackets — BA-386S, BA-578 and BA-A-28 — clustered on one site. The longest run of the group, and the shallowest of the deep sites.

La Belle (1686) wreck

Not a fishing spot — the hull is in Austin — but the defining wreck of this bay. Built in France by Honore Mallet in 1684 as a barque longue, 54 feet long, 40 to 45 tons, 8-foot draft. She grounded in early 1686 with six of 27 aboard surviving. A magnetometer survey found her in 1995; a bronze cannon with Louis XIV's crest recovered on 5 July 1995 confirmed the identity. A $1.5 million cofferdam allowed full excavation in 1996–97 and produced over one million artifacts. Since 2014 the conserved hull has been displayed at the Bullock Texas State History Museum.

Site 41CL92 (POC 4) - probably the Hannah Elizabeth wreck

Found in February 1998 during a search for La Salle's storeship L'Aimable, this is the best-studied wreck of the Pass Cavallo assemblage. It lies in about 6.5 meters of water and produced roughly 200 artifacts dating 1815–1845: over 80 lead shot, more than 40 pieces of brass firearm furniture, 15-plus firearm fragments, copper sheathing and iron bar stock. The leading identification is the Hannah Elizabeth, a small New Orleans merchant schooner carrying munitions for Texan troops at Goliad, wrecked at the entrance to Pass Cavallo in November 1835 while evading a Mexican brig-of-war.

Indianola courthouse wreck

Storm erosion has submerged most of the original Indianola townsite. The old courthouse now lies about 300 feet offshore, underwater. Structure is structure - and this one is a monument.

San Antonio Bay

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Matagorda Bay

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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