Photo by Ron Sinfelt

When Heather and Warren Michael invited me out to the boathouse behind their bed and breakfast on Anastasia Island, I was tempted to decline. After all, it was 10:30 at night and 650 feet of winding boardwalk separated the back porch of the Barrier Island Inn from its two-story boathouse. Why not wait and see the whole deal in the morning sunlight?

Ah, but how naive I was to nearly miss an absolute bonanza of speckled trout action in the halo of dock lights illuminating the water's surface.

A quick glance off the tip of the walkway between two boat slips revealed a melee of silver shadows darting through the light with amazing speed. On closer inspection, I could see that any shrimp or baitfish drifting across the spotlight exited "stage left" with great haste!

Anglers at the Barrier Island Inn, and fishermen targeting any lighted docks in local waters for that matter, regularly enjoy the speckled trout night bite. But anyone fishing in the St. Augustine area can claim a share of the fun too. There is no doubt that the rich habitat surrounding America's oldest city abounds with angling action. Here, trout share expansive habitat with redfish, flounder and black drum. Let's take a quick tour of what the area has to offer.

The Matanzas River was once traveled by Spanish explorers and French Huguenots and now borders downtown and dominates St. Augustine's inshore fishery with expansive habitat that begs contemporary exploration. East of the fortress Castillo de San Marco on the city's waterfront, the Tolomato River flows south and converges with the Matanzas at the ever-shifting St. Augustine Inlet.

On the south side of this coastal portal, Anastasia Island runs 24 miles down to Matanzas Inlet. The Intracoastal Waterway on the western side of the island uses the same course as the Matanzas River, but just before reaching Matanzas Inlet the two separate. The river takes an easterly course around Rattlesnake Island and historic Fort Matanzas, while the ICW goes around the other side of the isle. At Summer Haven to the south of the inlet, these two channels again join.

Fishy habitat lines the entire Matanzas River system, but newcomers fare best by learning what to look for and targeting some of the top spots. For starters, local charter captain Bill Schuller said night-fishing for trout in well-lit areas is a must.

"Docks and bridges, anywhere you have lights, offer excellent action for trout," he said. "You get the bait moving into the lights, and that draws in the predators."

During the day, you find best results by targeting areas that are most likely to hold plentiful food sources. Oyster bars harbor hordes of crabs, shrimp and invertebrates, as do the swaying pastures of marsh grass. On outgoing tides, work the mouths of small feeder creeks that drain water from the marsh interior. Fish use these tributaries as travel lanes and often settle into deep holes near their entrances at low tide.

There's also plenty of action as trout move out with the falling water funneling through the narrow creek mouth to set up on ambush points. As the outgoing tide sweeps baitfish and crustaceans past those stakeouts, hungry fish take full advantage of hapless prey.

Live oyster bars, as well as the shell mounds formed from decades of commercial oystermen discarding shells, always have a deeper side where daily tides form deep troughs. Current eddies mark these hot zones, and you can bet the farm that trout and reds will be stacked below and eating anything that passes overhead.