It is that time of the year again when those bronze tails school up and can be seen pushing across the grass flats; rooting and feeding along the way. The push of the water they leave behind can be seen a quarter of a mile away. This visual is exactly what can keep an angler awake all night before their fishing outing the next morning.

I know I did not get much beauty sleep the evening before this fishing extravaganza I am about to share with you. I knew I would be ready and able to show up for my redfish rendezvous. Now all I had to do was convince the redfish that they too needed to show up at this appointed meeting. Easier said than done.

Our fishing party stepped aboard Captain Van Hubbard's Charterboat in search of a fun day on the water and if we happened to run into some nice fish along the way we would consider that a bonus. We were in the company of friends (not paying clients) so the pressure of the captain having to produce fish in return for a paycheck was eliminated. We did not get the usual early morning jump; instead we chose to depart the dock around 8 a.m. We stopped to castnet some bait to fill the well with whitebait, Spanish sardines and pinfish to, hopefully, attract a school of redfish looking for an easy meal.

We were now ready for whatever. We had the well filled with all sorts of goodies. And we had enough tackle to open a floating Bass Pro Shop that day. I forgot to mention the two friends we had with us also were not new to the sport of fishing. Captain Vernon Robey and his wife Kim are from the Florida Keys. Vern has put his share of time in on the water, to say the least. His shallow water bonefish exploits and permit fishing with a fly, in the clear, skinny, waters of Florida Bay are a different world. But when he saw how a hungry school of redfish in Charlotte Harbor operates he was ready to wet a line. But those Charlotte redfish were not what Vern and Kim are accustomed to down on Summerland Key.

Our captain threw the first bait to this enormous school of reds. He knew this particular spot held redfish so we decided to stop there first. His first cast had a whitebait attached to the end of his rod and he tossed that bait to the edge of the mangroves. The bait twitched, then drew an instant wallop from a 30-inch redfish. It did not take the other anglers very long to get our lines wet as quickly as we could. We all scampered to grab our fishing poles and we quickly baited our hooks and cast to an area that was now completely illuminated in red. The redfish shuffle was on.

That redfish rendezvous I had dreamt about the evening before was now called into session. We had to do our share of shuffling onboard as well. At times all four rods were bent over with screaming drags as well as screaming anglers. Tails were coming out of the water everywhere. At times I had to set my pole down to capture the expressions of pure excitement on our angler friends' faces. I knew that I might not get many more opportunities to capture Kodak moments like this.

As soon as our baits hit the surface we were hooked up with a broad-shouldered redfish. Fish seemed to come from all directions to crash our baits. We did not have to be concerned with our baits getting disoriented by the current because they were not in the water long enough. Those baits quickly became easy prey for the waiting redfish.

There wasn't much time for talking during this feeding frenzy. We all realized there would be plenty of time to talk back home. Instead we enjoyed this wonderful fishing opportunity. We caught keeper-sized reds, some too big to keep and some that were just plain monsters. These redfish were competing with each other over every bait we presented.

Vern finally decided it was time to get his fly rods out and have some fun with this school of feeding redfish. He landed at least five reds on his fly rod. I captured some wonderful photos for him as well. The rest of us stuck with our spinning rods, we were as content as one could be, the action was as hot as it can get and we were enjoying the sound of those fish pulling drag. It was a sound that will stick with us for a long time to come.

The old saying 'we were fighting fish till our arms fell off" was relevant this day to say the least. I am usually a live bait angler by choice but I even got brave, on this outing, and threw some soft plastic baits to the reds. This helped boost my angling confidence level and made me feel more comfortable using something other than live baits. This was one of those special fishing days when I was truly convinced that these redfish would have crashed whatever baits you threw at them, even if that meant an empty hook. I sat in awe watching five or six fish follow a hooked red to the boat.

There even was a time, during this redfish shuffle, that we somehow managed to lose our grip on a rod that had a fish on the line. The pole zipped into the water and it was quite a sight. Here we were fighting three other fish and at the same time we had an unattended fishing pole swimming underneath the water next to the boat. However, we were able to snag that free-swimming pole (which had lost its angler) and we landed that redfish along with many more. I will spare us all the embarrassment of including a photo of that misadventure. It just goes to prove that we all tend to get so excited when the adrenalin takes us over.

This is a rare situation where Red Means Go. So go out and have fun on the water -- and if fishing is something you enjoy, as much as I do, I can only hope you too can find a school of reds like we did. Make sure you have plenty of film in your cameras so you can capture the joy that comes when we are lucky enough to go fishing.

It's the autumn of the year. And that means redfish time. Go get em.