Chartered Series: Marsh Fishing in St. Augustine with Capt. Sam Vigneault
Captain Sam Vigneault is a Florida native who runs NextGen Fishing Adventures alongside his business partner Connor Liebal. While Connor handles the offshore and tournament fishing side of the business, the thriving marshes around St. Augustine are Sam’s domain. He’s one of the main inshore and night fishing guides in the area, and knows rivers and creeks of the Intracoastal Waterway like the back of his hand.
Recently, Salt Life headed down to St. Augustine to spend the day on Sam’s boat and pull up some trout and redfish. He taught us all about the fishing landscape and local ecosystem, plus some tips and tricks for these species.
Night Fishing in the Marsh
While the waters in Northeast Florida are always teeming—think cobia, sheepshead, flounder, tarpon, and redfish—there are certain times throughout the month where the moon pulls the fish up to the surface, making nighttime the perfect time to land them.
St. Augustine has a 5½-foot tide variable, which pulls the bait through the marsh like a conveyor belt—and when the tide is right, the fish hang out under the lights of docks and bridges, rising up to the surface to check for their prey. Sam also outfits the boat with lights to help draw them up, and casts a fly right in the middle of the action. “It can be difficult on the angler—you have to really know where your cast is going without seeing it.”
Though it can be tricky, sight-fishing can be a fun change of pace for anglers, but the tides are only right for it during certain lunar phases. Thankfully, the marshes of St. Augustine offer plenty of great opportunities for anglers visiting the area—and when we linked up with Captain Sam, it was redfish we were after.
Targeting Redfish with Captain Sam
When it comes to targeting redfish, Sam is the guy to know. Since he first began fishing, he’s kept a log of the conditions—the water temperature, moon phase, air temperature, wind—everything that might affect where the fish are and what they’re eating. Over time, he’s developed an encyclopedic knowledge of their patterns, meaning he always leaves the dock with a plan.
When the Salt Life crew met up with him, he’d already been out on a scouting expedition to check out his usual spots, but didn’t spot anything hanging out at the surface. Since night fishing isn’t quite as exciting without being able to see the action, he opted to take us out for a daytime trip. The trout and redfish were biting, so we headed out to the feeder creeks and set up on the falling tide to catch them as they schooled up in the deeper pockets of the marsh.
Sam clued us in on the two telltale signs of redfish activity: “One of them is the egrets that are moving down the bank. They follow the schools of redfish through marsh because as the redfish move through the creeks, they scare the shrimp off to the side, and those egrets pick off the shrimp.
“Another one is when the tide gets low enough, you can see what we call ‘belly crawlers.’ There's almost not enough water for the redfish to be in, and their back is completely out of water. You can see their tails wagging through the water, and you just have to put that bait in front of them.”
Redfish eat pretty much anything, and Sam set us up with shrimp, mudminnows, and fiddler crab. He taught us to slowly drag the bait along the bottom to entice the reds using super light tackle—15 pound braid and 20 pound leader with a ¼ or ⅛ ounce jighead. “Sometimes you bump over an oyster, you have to differentiate whether that's a bite or whether it's just you bouncing on the bottom,” says Sam. “And so you really want a light rod with a light line so you can feel all those bites really well.”
Thanks to Sam’s guidance, we were able to pull up some beautiful reds, as well as some nice trout, and had our catch cooked up by the pros at the Salt Life Food Shack.
Ready for your next adventure?
If you’re heading down to St. Augustine, you can book a spot with Capt. Sam on FishingBooker.com or Instagram. Before heading out, be sure to stock up on the essentials online or at one of our retail locations. Stay Salty!
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