going to port A early september....we always pay for a fishing trip but this time we would like to fish piers and jetties...does anybody have any suggestions?? can u fish off any jetty?? and do they sell week long fishing passes?? If someone from the area would help me out i would really appreciate it...=)

well me and my freinds are real cheap and we ussually go to port A. What we do is stop at a gas station in port A get a parking pass for the beach (they cost 12 dollars and last the remainder of the year). then we camp on the beach near the caldwell pier for a night or two. my friends surf fish which is productive if the conditions fair but my best luck has been on the south jetty (its the one near the caldwell pier) there is also the north jetty which is supposed to be good and it is only accesible by boat; there is a ferry that takes you out for a fee. there are a few public docks around but ive never seen anything good fish from them but i always get a few crabs around them.

port A is a popular place so if its legal to fish there will be people there.

Fishing license info is here. As far as the jetties, lots of folks fish there. Just have plenty of hooks,leaders, and weights. You're gonna lose a bunch. I believe the Jetty boat actually charges $10 to deliver and pick you up from the north jetty. Never had a desire to go over there as I don't like to be stranded. You can also fish over at Charlie's Pasture. After exiting the ferry, take a right at the first light at the Valero station. Take the next right immediately behind the Valero,and follow that street. There is an area on the channel with a nice concrete bulkhead there. There is a pier there also, but I believe it is still closed for repair. Have fun.

Perhaps by fishing pass you meant beach parking permit? As the other poster stated, they are annual. There are a few areas you don't have to have a permit. IIRC, there are two beach areas, and the county park that includes the jetties there at Port A.

if you go to the north jetties it is not free.i think its 12$ a head

I was down there for the first time the week before last. The concrete bulkhead that slick willie mentioned was a pretty good place to go for us.We made some friends off there that caught a pretty good size sting ray. the pier is still out and you cant fish off of it.

I fished the south jetty and caught nothing but small catfish and one dogfish. Saw a few guys on the right side, middle of the day catch some nurse sharks about half way out. we fished with mullet, live shrimp, and squid. shrimp seems to do the best dead or alive to get something on your line. there is a great tackle shop in town that is the cheapest on tackle i found. take a lot of tackle. i broke off 4 lines in about 2 hours. if you dont want to fish directly on bottom take some floats.

The bait house is a small shop on the right that looks like an old gas station they are nice folks there. i got enough bait i gave a lot of it away for 20 dollars. that waswith a couple dollar tip in for them.

if you have about 80 dollars you can go out with the fishermans warf on the warf cat for a nice evening trip of about 5 hours. they run out about 7 miles roughly and put you on some king mackerel and sharks. we had a great group of 15 people and some great deckhands. the capt'n was as well a cool guy. Everyone caught a king, except me lol.My g/f caught one king that went about 10 lbs and another one that went about 18lbs. There were two kings that went about 25-30lbs.Everyone had at least one king up to 4 each. The 80 bucks included your fee for the trip, 10 dollars for the big fish pot, and a 10 dollar tip for the deckhands.

also they cleaned the fish for us @ 5 bucks each since we went out on the 8pm to 1 am trip and the fish cleaner was not there at that hour.

Good luck

Well,there's another price increase due to fuel costs. Fuel prices are going to drive a lot of the shrimpers and offshore boats out of business. I talk to the Viet guy that runs the Beacon Marina bait house pretty often. He says shrimping is very slow right now. He said on an all day trip out in Aransas Bay, he burns around 100 gallons of diesel fuel. That's at around $3.50 per gallon (off road diesel). I can see how they could go out of business pretty quick with a few bad days!