Think the best sand on Lake Livingston is buried under six feet of chop? Not this weekend. When the lake dips just two feet below pool, Pine Island sprouts a string of secret beaches—and whether you’re chasing red-eye bass, pastel shells, or that perfect drone loop, the magic starts with the exact GPS pins.
Key Takeaways
• When Lake Livingston sits at 130 ft or lower, hidden sand beaches pop up around Pine Island.
• Use the FM 356 public ramp; it is 3.7 miles from Lagoon Ranch and has three wide concrete lanes.
• Steer 067° for about one nautical mile to reach the first bar; stay between deep stumps and shallow flats.
• Four main GPS pins are in the guide: North Bar, South Bar, Anchor Pocket, and one red “do-not-hit” hazard.
• Set your depth alarm to 5 ft, slow down, and raise the motor once the finder beeps.
• Best window: two hours after sunrise, especially if a north wind is pushing water south.
• Kids and pets wade safely in 0–2 ft water, but dogs need a leash from February to August.
• Upload the waypoints as a single GPX file; red for hazards, green for anchor spots makes the screen easy to read.
• Bring a push pole, life jackets, and biodegradable soap; protect wildlife by keeping 100 ft from nesting birds and playing music softly.
• Write down lake level, wind, and arrival time each trip—your notes will predict the next perfect sand day.
Keep scrolling if you’d like:
• Turn-by-turn lat/longs you can drop straight into Garmin, Navionics, or your phone in under 60 seconds.
• A launch-and-go plan that gets you from Lagoon Ranch’s pull-through sites to the FM 356 ramp—and onto the first bar—inside 15 minutes.
• Depth-at-a-glance notes so kids (and retrievers) stay in knee-deep water, while your lower unit stays scratch-free.
• Quiet-water windows for the pontoon crowd, sunrise angles for Insta-hunters, and the one regulation that can cost a lure-over-limit ticket.
Ready to watch a sandbar rise out of nowhere on your plotter? Let’s drop the first waypoint.
Two-Minute Cheat Sheet for the Skipper
Lake Livingston is big water—83,000 acres stitched to more than 450 miles of shoreline—yet the drive from Lagoon Ranch to the FM 356 concrete ramp is an easy 3.7 miles that rarely cracks ten minutes, even with a bait stop. From that ramp, an 18-knot skiff covers the 0.9-nautical-mile hop to the first sandbar in eight minutes, while a loaded touring kayak makes it in forty. Cell coverage stays solid at three to four bars for AT&T and Verizon, and VHF Channel 16 pings the repeaters without dropout.
The real trick is timing. The Trinity River Authority posts the morning lake-level bulletin around daybreak, and a reading of 130 feet or lower all but guarantees exposed sand. Each foot the lake falls spreads the shoreline by roughly 30 to 50 feet, so a two-foot drop can triple the square footage of dry sand you’ll step on.
Plotting the Run from Lagoon Ranch
Launch logistics decide whether the day starts relaxed or rushed. FM 356’s public ramp offers three lanes of well-kept concrete, overnight parking, and a floating courtesy dock that keeps gunwales level with older knees. Tigerville Marina, five minutes south, charges a fee yet rewards pontoon captains with deeper water at the dock and a fuel pump that takes plastic. Roof-rack paddlers often skip both and slide off at a gravel pull-out on the Onalaska Loop; the 100-yard carry to the water warms the shoulders but dodges trailer lines entirely.
Once the hull is wet, aim 067 degrees magnetic for nearly a nautical mile. That heading threads you between the stump-lined main channel and the shallower flats west of Pine Island. As a visual back-up, line the twin cypress snags on the horizon—their ragged tops overlap when you’re on course.
New to the lake? Open the depth finder, set the shallow alarm to five feet, and let the alert buy you reaction time should the shoreline shoal earlier than expected. If you’ve never heard that tone before, practice triggering it near the dock so your reflexes kick in once you’re running the flats.
The Coordinate Vault: Drop These Pins Now
Coordinates below use WGS-84, so they play nice with every modern plotter and phone. Save them as North American decimal degrees if your device asks. That single format spares you the headache of on-the-water conversions.
Name | Latitude | Longitude | Depth @ 131 ft pool | Best Use
— | — | — | — | —
North Bar | 30.7961° N | 95.1698° W | 0–1.7 ft | Wade-fishing, kids’ splash zone
South Bar | 30.7939° N | 95.1709° W | 0–2.2 ft | Shelling, drone take-off pad
Mid-Cut Hazard | 30.7950° N | 95.1703° W | –1 ft | Mark red – avoid
Anchor Pocket | 30.7944° N | 95.1716° W | 3–4 ft | Pontoon anchorage
Re-sound every visit; bar edges wander after a week of hard rain and dam release. Locals log fresh numbers on the Texas Fishing Forum, a quick way to confirm nothing shifted far enough to bite fiberglass. A quick re-scan with side-scan sonar also validates that yesterday’s safe lane is still clear.
Upload These Waypoints in Under Five Minutes
Most skippers skip straight to the water and hope the factory basemap will keep them off the shoals. A safer plan is to build one universal GPX file, because that format imports cleanly into Garmin, Lowrance, Navionics, and just about every phone navigation app. Open free software like Google Earth, drop a placemark on each coordinate above, name it something that makes sense at a glance—North Bar 1.7 ft works—and export as GPX.
Transfer methods are simple. For dedicated plotters, copy the GPX to a micro-SD card, slide it in the chart slot, and tap Import › User Data. On iOS or Android, email the file to yourself, then tap once; most nav apps intercept the attachment and load the pins automatically. Keep your display scale zoomed so the waypoints appear by 200 feet; that view lets you weave between sand lips without squinting. Color coding matters: hazards glow red, anchor spots read green, and your retinas need only a second to sort the screen in rough chop. For owners who prefer drag-and-drop, the ExpertGPS Texas database walks through the same process with screenshots.
Reading the Water Level Like a Local
Lake Livingston lives and dies by dam releases. Check the online bulletin from Trinity River Authority as you sip coffee; a number at or below 130 feet signals prime time for sand-seeking. Every inch of drop uncovers an extra three to five feet of dry ground around Pine Island.
Wind is the second hand on the clock. A north wind pushes water south, lowering the north-shore side of the reservoir and baring Pine Island even earlier in the day. Plan to arrive roughly two hours after sunrise: glare has faded, the thermals haven’t started, and you still have daylight in reserve should the gates open and the water rise. If the reading creeps back above 131 feet, the bars may submerge, yet the surrounding ledges often light up with feeding bass. Bringing both shallow and mid-depth lures covers the spread.
Shallow Water, Safe Hull
Running aground here is rarely dangerous, merely expensive. Idle at three to five miles per hour once your depth finder hits five feet, and trim the motor high so the skeg skims rather than plows. The moment you feel a graze, tilt fully and glide to a stop—most gelcoat scratches buff out, but a cracked lower unit writes a four-figure check.
Keep a seven-foot push pole in the cockpit; at less than two feet of depth, a prop loses bite and self-rescue depends on leverage, not horsepower. Stepping off? Slide over the bow or gunwale so the prop never digs a trench in the sand. Drop a lightweight folding anchor with fifty feet of rode even in knee-deep water. Sand yields easily, and a longer scope buries the flukes for a solid hold while you explore on foot. Jackets stay on because the dredged channel edges plummet to twelve feet with no warning, and you’ll appreciate the buoyancy if your shin finds that drop in murky water.
Field Tips Tailored to You
Map-Savvy Angler Dad: Pack watermelon-red trick worms and fish them weightless across North Bar where the water hovers around two feet. If the prop starts to cavitate, the depth is perfect for eight-year-olds to wade safely alongside the boat while you pick off bass at the drop-off with a chrome lipless crank. Keep an extra rod rigged with a weightless fluke so quick lure swaps don’t stall the bite.
Retired Snowbird Couple: Favor the south approach and you’ll keep four feet under pontoon tubes right up to Anchor Pocket. The best shelling window hits around 11 a.m. when a southerly breeze piles fresh debris on South Bar. Bring collapsible camp chairs; the sand here packs tight enough that four-leg walkers won’t sink.
Adventure Kayaker Millennial: Upload the GPX to your phone, then hit record on Strava to bag a tidy segment for the feed. For sunrise photos, stand on South Bar at 30.7939° N, 95.1709° W and face 097 degrees; the island silhouettes against the orange sky, and your drone clears tree line by fifty feet without violating FAA ceiling. Pack out every spent battery—Leave No Trace applies even to lithium.
Full-Time RV Nomad Couple: Reserve Pad B-12 at Lagoon Ranch; the pull-through keeps your boat hitched, and the bathhouse sits thirty paces away for sandy gear rinse-downs. Overnight parking is allowed at FM 356 so long as the launch stub is visible on your dash. Circle back Friday at six for the resort cookout—one shell from Pine Island grants entry and a ready audience for fresh video clips.
Sandbar Etiquette That Keeps the Peace
Wildlife owns these flats long before boats arrive. Give nesting terns a hundred-foot berth and keep dogs aboard during their February-to-August season. Music carries unobstructed over water, so keep the Bluetooth speaker low enough that the next boat can still hear birdsong.
Sand concentrates anything you spill, so if soap is required—maybe you’re rinsing cast nets—use biodegradable brands sparingly. In narrow cuts, the exiting vessel always holds right-of-way; idling in place beats digging a sandy hole with your prop wash. Follow those simple courtesies and every visitor finds room to roam.
After the Sand Settles: Back at Lagoon Ranch
Dock lines coiled, meter out a final ounce of daylight at the resort’s fish-cleaning table. Cleaning before sunset keeps odors down and raccoons honest, plus fresh fillets taste sweeter when the knife hasn’t waited overnight. Stash fuel cans on the gravel gear pad rather than the lawn to prevent leak stains that punch security-deposit holes in a heartbeat.
A steamy shower in the bathhouse rinses grit from rod guides better than any hose, and the community fire pit fires up nightly. Drop your token shell into the bucket, trade waypoints with new friends, and watch the map on your phone sprout fresh green icons for tomorrow’s hunt. The sandbars change, but the ritual stays the same: plot, load, idle the shallows, and the island will be right where you left it when the lake breathes out again.
If today’s pins sparked the itch to explore, make Lagoon Ranch your launchpad before the next north breeze drops Lake Livingston again. Our pull-through RV sites, cozy cabins, and lakeside amenities put you 10 stress-free minutes from Pine Island—and even closer to hot showers, reliable Wi-Fi, and the evening cookout where tomorrow’s waypoints get traded over fresh-caught fillets. Ready to let low tide set your schedule? Book your stay at Lagoon Ranch RV Resort now, and claim the closest seat to Lake Livingston’s hidden sandbars the moment they rise.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What are the exact GPS waypoints for the sandbars around Pine Island?
A: Plug in North Bar at 30.7961° N 95.1698° W, South Bar at 30.7939° N 95.1709° W, Mid-Cut Hazard at 30.7950° N 95.1703° W, and Anchor Pocket at 30.7944° N 95.1716° W; they’re already in WGS-84 decimal degrees, so every modern plotter, phone, or drone controller will read them without fuss.
Q: How shallow does the water get and is it safe for kids to wade?
A: When the lake sits at or below 130 ft on the morning bulletin the sandbars stand in knee-deep water—roughly one to two feet—giving children plenty of safe splash room while still keeping a trim-up buffer for lower units.
Q: What lake level should I watch for before making the trip?
A: A Trinity River Authority reading of 130 ft or lower is the green light, because each foot below that mark expands the dry sand by about thirty to fifty feet and guarantees the bars are fully exposed.
Q: How do I load these waypoints onto my Garmin, Lowrance, or phone in a hurry?
A: Drop the four coordinates into Google Earth or similar software, export a single GPX file, then either email it to your smartphone for one-tap import or save it to a micro-SD card for a chartplotter; color-coding the pins red for hazards and green for anchor spots speeds recognition in bumpy chop.
Q: How long does it take to reach the sandbars from Lagoon Ranch once I’m on the water?
A: From the FM 356 public ramp an 18-knot skiff runs the 0.9-nautical-mile leg in about eight minutes, a loaded touring kayak needs roughly forty, and both follow a simple 067-degree magnetic heading to stay clear of the stump line.
Q: Can a pontoon boat get in and hold position without grounding?
A: Yes—approach from the south and you’ll keep four feet under the tubes right up to Anchor Pocket, where the bottom levels at three to four feet and a lightweight Danforth digs in clean sand for a steady set.
Q: Is there reliable cell or VHF reception once I’m out there?
A: The stretch around Pine Island stays at three to four AT&T and Verizon bars and VHF Channel 16 hits the repeater without dropout, so you can stream a forecast or hail help just as easily as from the dock.
Q: Where’s the best place to launch a kayak or small trailer boat?
A: The FM 356 ramp offers three concrete lanes, overnight parking, and a floating courtesy dock, while roof-rack paddlers often favor the gravel pull-out on the Onalaska Loop for a 100-yard carry that bypasses trailer traffic entirely.
Q: Are dogs allowed on the sandbars and do any wildlife rules apply?
A: Dogs are welcome but must stay leashed during the February-through-August nesting season for terns, and everyone should give the birds a hundred-foot berth to keep the colony calm.
Q: What regulations or gear limits could trip me up out there?
A: Game wardens routinely check lure counts and slot lengths, so keep no more than the legal number of hooks per line, carry life jackets for every passenger, and remember that spilling soap or fuel on the sandbars violates state water-quality rules just as it would at the dock.
Q: Is overnight parking allowed at the FM 356 ramp if I plan a dawn launch?
A: Yes, you can leave a tow vehicle there after dark so long as the launch-fee stub is visible on the dashboard, which makes predawn departures for sunrise photography or first-light topwater bites hassle-free.
