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The First Annual River Rodeo 2026 is coming to the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River.
The San Antonio River Authority and the San Antonio River Foundation, in partnership with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Fin Addict Angler Foundation, Angler's Atlas, and Brackenridge Park Conservancy are sponsoring the community-wide fishing challenge designed to connect people to the San Antonio River and support fisheries research.
Contestants are eligible for prizes and raffles throughout the competition, which runs April 4 through May 31.
Mitch Magruder is an aquatic biologist with the San Antonio River Authority. He says participants will be giving them helpful information.
"Most importantly of all, they're contributing valuable biological data and fisheries data for managers like myself and some of our partners like Texas Parks and Wildlife to utilize to benefit, you know, come back to the anglers and our management and our abilities to make decisions to, to support them and to support the resource overall," he told TPR.
Magruder said the data collected won't give away any secret fishing spots.
"They're gonna log what kind of fish they caught —so the species — and then we will get a, a rough, location. And I want to emphasize that because I don't want anglers to think they're giving away their, their secret honey holes, right? We'll know a general location within one or two river miles of where you caught that fish," he said.
Participants can log their catches using MyCatch by Angler's Atlas. Anglers can record species, size and general location data, helping biologists and river scientists better understand fish populations and overall river health.
The San Antonio River Mission Reach Restoration was completed in 2013.
"The Mission Reach Ecosystem Restoration Project is one of the largest urban river ecosystem restoration projects in the United States and even in the world, frankly, where nearly nine miles of river was heavily restored, managed for floodplain management, that safe component, but also adding that environmental ecological component to restore the habitat and the species that were originally there and bring them (the fish) back," Magruder said.
The Mission Reach section restoration project has helped transform an eight-mile stretch of the river into a thriving habitat for native plants and wildlife, including a variety of fish species.
The River Rodeo Challenge kicks off on April 4 at Padre Park with a special opening-day fishing clinic.
More info on the River Rodeo is available at SARiverAuthority.org.
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