The Aquastar had seen us through our wedding, purchase of our first house and setting up Stacey’s business. However, with much of the rest of the fleet being faster and the popularity of our offshore trips for cod and bass, we wanted something faster and more modern. After owning her for 5 years and making many improvements she was sold quite easily. She went to Hartlepool and I gather the new owner, Trevor Newton, is offering charter trips aboard her this year. Trevor very kindly gave us a few weeks grace to find a new boat. There was nothing that tickled our fancy being advertised so we put a wanted Ad up. There were several replies and one offered us an evolution 33. I liked the evolution boats and being 33ft this would fit on my mooring too. Thanks to Trevor’s generosity we were able to tie in the lorry taking the Aqaustar going to Hartlepool and straight to Weymouth to pick up the Evo. I was without a boat for no more than 24hrs! We had the Evo up and running in time for my next trip. There were a few changes I wanted to make in the wheelhouse layout, and have since. Our first trip was offshore and we even found some spur-dogs. The Evo made life easier we could cruise at 16-18knots, she provided a drier ride and she had flush decks so she was deceptively roomy. She came into her own on the offshore trips where many of the lads prefer a smaller group onboard. We had great success on the offshore bass trips despite having to work around a windfarm that was under construction. This windfarm also seemed to play its part in the demise of the tope fishing too. When I got offshore in the winter we still had some nice cod and the spur-dogs as we got into the spring. I was now offering most of my offshore trips to target bass from the end of June onwards as the tope were very sporadic. This was all well and good until there were strict bag limits put on bass. The initial bag limit of 3 fish per angler was not an issue as only once or twice in my whole career had I seen a party keep more than 3 per angler. If anything, it stopped those that were being greedy. When they reduced it to one per angler and then a ban on anglers keeping them at all it meant the end to the majority of my offshore bass trips for a while. The inshore fishing is our bread and butter here and the Blackwater Estuary comes into its own throughout the winter. We can often be catching while other ports are forced to cancel. The Estuary itself provides great fishing and shelter from most wind directions. We don’t always have to stay in the Estuary either as there are many sand banks as well as the coastline of Jaywick, Clacton and beyond also offering us sheltered fishing too. One thing we haven’t been able to offer the last few years has been cod fishing. The last year with any numbers was around 2015 into 2016. I sincerely hope they return as I personally enjoy catching them. There are many theories surrounding their disappearance but I won’t go into detail. All I hang on to at the moment was, they were here not so long ago. After all, in the spring of 2015 some boats had over 80 in a day in the Estuary! Happily the thorn-back rays have filled a gap for the time being. We now expect them in varying numbers throughout the year. When they move inshore in numbers in the spring we can have some impressive numbers and the best I have seen is over 120 between 6 anglers!
It’s fair to say the Evolutions speed has helped with our hound fishing too at times. We often have to steam 20 odd miles around sand banks to reach some of our smooth-hound marks. There is usually a certain time of tide to be there and we are guaranteed to push the tide for half of the journey. We have seen some great fishing for hounds aboard her and the time saved steaming made evening trips realistic too.
The tope fishing has come back slightly over the past couple of years and our hardcore anglers have still put in the effort and got some good results. The same is true of the bass, I don’t think I did any offshore bass trips when they were banned from anglers keeping them back in 2018. Even with a1 fish bag limit bookings were hard to fill, but we are slowly getting given a bit more and this year the bag limit is 2 per angler and the season is longer.

keep an eye of for part. 8 in a couple of days or like the Essex sea fishing facebook page.

the evolution is currently for sale please contact 07956411528