Heading down to Matagorda next week (Oct 12-15) for short fishing trip. Will be staying off beach rd in a house on the Colorado River with pier and lights. About 3 miles from nature park. No Boats or yaks. We plan to fish the pier quite often and at night. Hit the surf and jetties during light. Would like to drive the beach and get to portions of east bay in a couple of 4wd trucks. I have fished Galveston. Never been to Matagorda or really fished the river like that.

Any tips on bait, tactics, more optimal locations on foot basically? Would love to get some crabbing in. Target species would be same as everyone. Specs, Flounder, Reds... Anything other than the dreaded hardheads.

They are catching tarpon in the Colorado River. Farther up than you might think.

Free lining shrimp under the lights hooked so they can still swim works well (especially for young kids.)

Good chance flounder are still running, they were last weekend along the brazos and in Christmas bay.

Great time of year to be on the coast. Big reds at the jetties in October all across the gulf. Not sure if recent high temps will mess that up though.

Recent rains will help pack the beach but Id make sure to have a couple 30ft tow straps, good ways to secure them to each vehicle, One or preferably two sets of traction boards. The cheapos work well. And a good full sized shovel in the back of the truck that doesnt get taken out. Crossing the dunes can get iffy at times. Turn traction control off and dont be afraid of the skinny pedal as long as you arent getting any axle hop.

The bridge on the road that goes past the cemetery is pretty much the only decent crabbing spot around. It can get a little shady but everyone is always friendly. Handlining for crabs in the river is too slow but you can do decent with traps. Set and check every few hours and you can have a good boil by the end of the weekend.

Yep was down there a few wks ago and that sand was sofffft and deep

You will probably catch more sand trout than specks under the lights. Use a 1/4 oz Kastmaster spoon about a foot behind a white jig on a double rig and you can catch the sandies two at a time when the school moves through the lights. If you don't know how to do a double rig, I am sure you can find on the web. Grew up fishing the river there in the 70's/80's before the corps of engineers screwed up the the fishing by changing the course of the river to empty into West Bay instead of the gulf. River is only about 15 feet deep now instead of 30 like it was before. We used to slay the specks, reds, and flounder there.

My wife follows a FB group called Matagorda Off-Road and Recovery. It's a public group; if you join it you can find out what the beach conditions are and reach out for help if you do get stuck.

We got back from doing that exact thing two weekends ago. Only difference was we were just north (on true Colorado River) of the ICW. Caught about 30 billion very undersized sand trout. My wife caught one decent sized croaker (first I've seen good eating sized in many years). Son caught one rat red in surf.

A few things:
1) live shrimp way more expensive than I remember (I think I paid $37 for a quart and a half).
2) Pink fishbites did amazing. The fish we did catch hammered those things.
3) Probably closer to coast (like you're doing) maybe better.
4) Hope you do better than we did on keepers (though wife, son, and his friends still had a ball catching lots of fish - albeit all undersized).

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You will probably catch more sand trout than specks under the lights.

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This was our experience. TONS of small sand trout under the lights. If only 25% of them had been decent sized, we would have had lots of filets. But none were even close to messing with.

Thank you for all the responses and information thrown into this post. Will try and throw a update in here around weekend.