Sabine / Port Arthur
Sabine is the top-right corner of Texas, where the Sabine and Neches rivers empty into a shallow brackish lake and then squeeze out through a dredged pass between two rock jetties. It is river water, refinery water and Gulf water in the same tide, and the fish move with the salt wedge rather than the calendar. The structure that matters here is not a pier — it is an oyster reef the size of a small town, a pair of Corps jetties begun in 1882, and eighteen and a half miles of dredge spoil the locals call Pleasure Island.
Piers & platforms
Pleasure Island Pier
275 feet long, on the lake side of Pleasure Island next to the Miracle Beach Boat Launch and the Pleasure Island Marina. It is unlit, which in practice makes it a daytime pier. No fee schedule or posted hours have been published; the tourism office takes enquiries on (409) 982–4675.
Sea Rim State Park
A 4,100-acre park split into a Beach Unit with 5.2 miles of drivable beachfront and a Marsh Unit with more than 16 miles of paddling trails used by kayakers, birders, crabbers, anglers and hunters. Entry was $3 for ages 13 and up as of 2014. Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008 both wrecked it; the park reopened with limited services in 2009 and held a grand reopening in 2014 after Phase I redevelopment — a dune boardwalk with rinse showers, a 15-site beachside full-service campground, a six-person marsh-view cabin and a new day-use area, paid for with $2 million from the 81st Legislature and $187,000 of Deepwater Horizon restoration money. There is a free loaner tackle program, and no fishing license is required to fish from shore inside the park with an entry permit. There is no confirmed Gulf-side fishing pier here - the access is surf, shore and marsh.
McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge piers
Free public fishing: two piers on Ten-Mile Cut and five piers along Clam Lake, plus surf fishing along the Gulf shoreline and open roadside ditches. Pole and line, rod and reel, or hand-held line only. Harvest of frogs, turtles, shrimp and oysters is prohibited, and fishing from water-control structures is banned. Five shallow-draft ramps serve the refuge — two at Clam Lake, one each at Ten-Mile Cut and Five-Mile Cut, and Star Lake seasonally from 15 March to 31 August — with motors capped at 25 HP and no personal watercraft. No pier lengths, lighting or construction dates have been published.
4 Pier Boat Launch and Walter Umphrey State Park launch
These are the two named launches used to reach the jetties. Sabine Pass also has an 87-slip marina supporting inshore and offshore charter operations. Neither launch is a fishing pier in its own right, but for boat anglers they are the front door to the rocks.
Jetties & passes
The Sabine Jetties
Two granite structures confining the flow out of Sabine Pass. Local tourism material describes them as roughly three miles each; the Corps-derived figures are longer, and the difference is the submerged and settled portion — trust the Corps numbers for the structure and assume the walkable part is shorter. The rocks hold speckled trout, redfish, Spanish mackerel, jack crevalle, black drum, sheepshead, gafftop, sharks, rays, flounder, gulf trout and croaker, with occasional kingfish and ling. Three methods are used locally and they are not interchangeable: walking the rocks, anchoring nearby, and drifting the granite. The quarry source, the exact boat-cut locations and the safe walkable distance have no published figures for Sabine specifically — scout before you commit to a walk.
Reefs, wrecks & structure
Sabine Lake oyster reef natural reef
About four square miles of oyster, one of the largest unharvested reefs in the Gulf of Mexico, with sections standing 10 feet off the bottom. It is not the original reef — that one sat in the pass channel and was harvested out by 1904 — but the one the oysters rebuilt further north over the next century. A 2007 TPWD study found that near-reef sampling produced 70% of all organisms collected, and identified fifteen fish species found only near the reef. Louisiana closed harvest on its side in 2018. Texas placed more than 1,200 river-rock mounds in 2015 to give spat something to set on. This is the single most important structure in the region and it is inside the lake, not offshore.
HI-54 Shallow artificial reef
Deployed 27–28 June 2024 and, at 1.7 miles off the beach, the closest artificial reef to shore in Texas. Twenty acres in 21 feet of water, built from obsolete concrete and metal - decommissioned drilling components and structural steel, inspected for environmental safety before it went in. TPWD lists the target species as spotted seatrout, red drum, red snapper, cobia, mackerel and sharks. It is inside the range of a well-found bay boat on a flat day, which is the entire point of it.
Sabine HI-20 Nearshore Reef Site nearshore reef
160 acres permitted, with the first 40 or so deployed in October 2018. The material went in over several years: a 120 ft by 30 ft by 6 ft barge in early October 2018, granite blocks and concrete in late October and early November 2018, more than 500 concrete culverts in 2021, and 150 reef pyramids in December 2021. Roughly $906,000 has been invested at HI-20 by CCA Texas, the Building Conservation Trust and local industry partners. TPWD has not published an exact depth or distance offshore for the site.
The year on this water
Live scores for this region run on the Bite Map; seasons and limits on the season pages — never from memory.
A dash of history
1863 - Dowling holds the pass
On 8 September 1863 Lt. Richard W. "Dick" Dowling and the Davis Guards — an Irish-American company raised out of Houston and Galveston, about 46 men working six smoothbore guns at Fort Griffin, roughly a mile upstream on the south-west bank — stopped a Union force of 5,000 infantry, four gunboats and 18 transports under Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin. Two Union gunboats were captured and one destroyed. Union losses ran past 350 killed, wounded, missing or captured. The Confederates took zero casualties. The mud flats and the narrow channel did most of the work, and both are still there under your boat.
1855-1857 - the Sabine Pass Lighthouse
The lighthouse stands on the Louisiana side of the pass, in Cameron Parish on the east shore. It was built between 1855 and 1857 and first lit in mid-1857, a 75-foot tower with a focal height of 85 feet. It was deactivated in 1952. Today it is abandoned and badly deteriorated; the figure put on stabilising it is roughly $3 million. You can see it from the water on the run out to the rocks, and it is the oldest thing in sight.
1882 - the Corps starts the jetties
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began entrance improvements at Sabine Pass in 1882, building stone jetties to confine the flow, scour a deeper channel and hold an entrance that had never stayed put. Mid-1890s plans pushed the structures into deeper water; the extension out to the 25-foot depth contour — possibly two more miles seaward — was finished by 1920. A jetty beacon went up in 1896, but the permanent East Jetty light station was deliberately held back until 1924, so the extensions had time to settle first.
1895-1899 - Stilwell builds a port
Railroad promoter Arthur E. Stilwell founded Port Arthur as the southern terminus of what became the Kansas City Southern. Settlement dates to 1895 and incorporation to 1898. The British steamer Saint Oswald arrived in August 1899 and opened the port to seagoing traffic. John W. Gates displaced Stilwell as the dominant figure in the town after 1899. Everything an angler launches from today — the canal, the island, the marinas — exists because a railroad man wanted deep water at the end of his line.
1899-1908 - Pleasure Island is dug, not found
Pleasure Island is spoil. The Corps of Engineers built it from material dredged for the Port Arthur Canal, completed in 1899, and the Sabine-Neches Intracoastal Waterway, completed in 1908. It runs 18.5 miles between the mouth of the Neches and the Sabine Causeway. Today the island carries fishing piers, parks, a jetty system, levees and a 300-slip marina. If you fish the Sabine Lake shoreline from the west, you are standing on the bottom of the ship channel.
1901 - Spindletop rewrites the water
The Lucas Gusher at Spindletop in 1901 remade the local economy inside a year. Gulf Oil and Texaco built refineries in 1901–02 and the port pivoted to petrochemicals. The consequences for anglers are permanent: the Entergy Canal, the industrial outfalls that hold winter black drum, and the ship traffic that dictates when you can and cannot sit on the rocks.
1913-1967 - the amusement era and its end
Pleasure Island got a dance hall and a roller coaster in 1913. By the 1940s it carried the Pleasure Pier Ballroom, a midway, an Olympic-size pool, what was billed as the largest roller coaster in the south, and an 18-hole golf course. The Pleasure Pier bridge opened in 1931, was struck by ships repeatedly, and was taken out of service in 1967 — which isolated the island. Storms, fire and erosion finished off what was left of the old facilities.
1904 to now - the reef that moved north
An 1840 map put the region's oyster bed in the Sabine Pass channel itself. Late-1800s ship-channel dredging changed the salinity, and the original reef was completely harvested out by 1904. The oysters migrated north to the southern end of Sabine Lake near the Texas-Louisiana causeway, and the reef there built up over the following century. Louisiana banned harvest on its side in 2018; Texas placed more than 1,200 river-rock mounds in 2015 as settlement substrate.
The record book, locally
Sabine Lake's TPWD water-body records read like the lake itself — a mix of saltwater and river fish on the same page. The spotted seatrout record is 11.50 lb at 30.50 inches, taken by Kelly Rising on 28 March 1999 on a chartreuse Top Dog. Brian Poirier's red drum went 35.44 lb at 43.00 inches on mudminnows on 27 March 2004. Joseph Murty holds two: a 34.14 lb black drum on 11 May 2015 and a 28.50 lb jack crevalle on 21 October 2014, both on a Saltwater Assassin. The southern flounder record — 13.00 lb, 28.00 inches, Herbert Endicott — has stood since 18 February 1976. On the freshwater end of the same water: a 136.30 lb alligator gar (Wilbert Duhon, 14 April 1996), a 50.15 lb flathead catfish (Dale Williams, 20 October 2016, live mullet), a 42.78 lb blue catfish (Bobby Hutchinson, 12 May 2005, cut mullet) and a 17.31 lb striped bass (Joseph Gauthier, 29 December 2006, on a mudminnow). Harold Bean IV took a 39.00 lb bull shark on sand trout on 27 July 2005. Spencer Cuniff's tripletail went 22.14 lb on live shrimp on 20 July 2024. Catch-and-release length records: red drum 45.00 in (Khiem Nguyen, 12 July 2020, mullet cut bait), black drum 43.00 in and sheepshead 19.50 in (both Donald Crain, 2011 and 2010). The fly-rod seatrout mark is 3.02 lb / 21.50 in, Chuck Uzzle, 17 October 2001, on a clouser.
Sabine Lake
Weight Records · Rod & Reel · All-Ages
| Species | lb | in | Date | Angler | Bait / method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bass, Largemouth | 3.75 | 18.50 | Jan 26, 2019 | Roger Bertrand | downsouth |
| Bass, Striped | 17.31 | 33.63 | Dec 29, 2006 | Joseph Gauthier | mudminnow |
| Bowfin | 6.81 | 25.75 | Jan 9, 2018 | Robert Vail | cut mullet |
| Catfish, Blue | 42.78 | 42.50 | May 12, 2005 | Bobby Hutchinson | cut mullet |
| Catfish, Channel | 7.44 | 23.90 | Jan 28, 2018 | Betty Vail | cut mullet |
| Catfish, Flathead | 50.15 | 45.25 | Oct 20, 2016 | Dale Williams | live mullet |
| Catfish, Gafftopsail | 8.08 | 27.00 | Jul 23, 2007 | Michael Darder | mullet |
| Croaker, Atlantic | 3.79 | 19.50 | Oct 24, 2000 | Johnny Johnson | |
| Drum, Black | 34.14 | — | May 11, 2015 | Joseph Murty | saltwater assasin |
| Drum, Freshwater | 33.62 | 33.00 | Feb 20, 1995 | Michael McKinney | |
| Drum, Red | 35.44 | 43.00 | Mar 27, 2004 | Brian Poirier | mudminnows |
| Eel, Snapper | 2.38 | 38.75 | Oct 7, 2013 | Greg Lawrence | live mullet |
| Flounder, Southern | 13.00 | 28.00 | Feb 18, 1976 | Herbert Endicott | |
| Gar, Alligator | 136.30 | 79.90 | Apr 14, 1996 | Wilbert Duhon | |
| Gar, Shortnose | 3.31 | 27.00 | Apr 5, 2019 | Mathew McBee | live shrimp |
| Herring, Skipjack | 2.43 | 15.67 | Jan 20, 1987 | Paul Jorgenson | |
| Jack, Crevalle | 28.50 | 42.00 | Oct 21, 2014 | Joseph Murty | saltwater assasin |
| Kingfish, Southern | 1.03 | 12.76 | Mar 4, 1998 | Albert Schwartzenburg | |
| Ladyfish | 2.10 | 21.25 | Aug 3, 2010 | Mike Jackson | live shad |
| Menhaden, Finescale | 0.98 | 13.63 | Jul 30, 2005 | Richard Constantine Jr. | live mullet |
| Puffer, Smooth | 2.70 | 18.50 | May 6, 1998 | Charles Meaux | |
| Ray, Cownose | 25.38 | 32.25 | Apr 30, 2006 | Alvin Holt | hardhead catfish |
| Seatrout, Sand | 2.14 | 17.00 | May 12, 2006 | Charles Hoyt | artificial plastic |
| Seatrout, Spotted | 11.50 | 30.50 | Mar 28, 1999 | Kelly Rising | chartreuse top dog |
| Shark, Bull | 39.00 | 59.00 | Jul 27, 2005 | Harold Bean IV | sand trout |
| Sheepshead | 7.88 | 22.75 | Nov 12, 2010 | Albert Schwartzenburg | live shrimp |
| Snapper, Gray | 0.56 | 9.88 | Sep 2, 2000 | Albert Schwartzenburg | |
| Tripletail | 22.14 | — | Jul 20, 2024 | Spencer Cuniff | Live Shrimp |
Weight Records · Fly Fishing · All-Ages
| Species | lb | in | Date | Angler | Bait / method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seatrout, Spotted | 3.02 | 21.50 | Oct 17, 2001 | Chuck Uzzle | clouser |
Weight Records · Rod & Reel · Junior Angler
| Species | lb | in | Date | Angler | Bait / method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catfish, Gafftopsail | 2.19 | 19.38 | May 23, 2015 | Ethan Beck | shrimp |
| Gar, Alligator | 48.00 | 59.00 | Jul 13, 2008 | Blane Morrow | live mullet |
| Shark, Bull | 39.00 | 59.00 | Jul 27, 2005 | Harold Bean IV | sand trout |
| Sheepshead | 3.80 | 16.50 | Oct 3, 2009 | Ethan Beck | shrimp |
Catch and Release Records (by length) · Rod & Reel · All Ages
| Species | lb | in | Date | Angler | Bait / method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drum, Black | 43.00 | Feb 19, 2011 | Donald Crain | shrimp | |
| Drum, Red | 45.00 | Jul 12, 2020 | Khiem Nguyen | mullet cut bait | |
| Sheepshead | 19.50 | Nov 6, 2010 | Donald Crain | crab |
Catch and Release Records (by length) · Rod & Reel · Junior Angler
| Species | lb | in | Date | Angler | Bait / method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catfish, Gafftopsail | 22.00 | Aug 10, 2010 | Branden Ringham | cut bait |
State records live on the Record Book. TPWD tracks water-body records only for the bays it names — the Gulf table covers surf, jetty and offshore fish alike.
Hazards on this water
The jetty rules that apply on the Galveston granite apply here: never pull an anchor without the motor running, never shut the motor down without the anchor set, and expect the wind to shift faster than you can react. Wet rock is slick rock — cleated boots are standard kit on any Texas jetty. Boat cuts and gaps in jetty structures strand walking anglers when the tide comes up, and no published survey of the Sabine cuts exists, so treat every gap as a commitment. Portuguese man o' war drift onto the Upper Coast beaches with warming spring water; there is no Sabine-specific advisory published, but Sea Rim and McFaddin front the same Gulf as Galveston and the same spring drift reaches them. If you are stung, lift tentacles off with gloves or a stick rather than bare hands, rinse with seawater, and soak in vinegar or saline. Urine does not work and makes it worse.
Coast-wide stingers, first aid and the flag system: Jellyfish, Stingers & Things That Hurt.
Elsewhere on the coast
Every figure on this page carries a source above it. Where a length, date or fee has no published figure we say so rather than guess. Corrections: support@ironjetty.com.