AS we’re now into the autumn season, I thought we’d take a look back at our summer and how it’s fared with previous years.

As April arrived, so did the thornback rays – in abundance.

The boats had been catching them from early March, but, by April, the first of the rays had hit the piers and beaches.

Once again, Clacton Pier had seen the first well before Walton Pier, which was a month later.

May saw the first bass for the boats, although they were slightly later for the beaches and, on the whole, the bass stocks seemed to have dwindled this year.

Not so many big bass were caught, but still quite a few in the 1lb to 2lb range for the beaches.

June started with stingrays being caught once again from the St Osyth beaches.

Fish to over 40lbs were being caught with regularity, which was far better than last year.

Once again, those smoothhounds failed to arrive to our shoreline and it’s been some years now since we’ve caught any big hounds from the beaches, although we did see a few fish around the 5lb mark from both of the piers.

The boats had a good run of hounds, although on average these fish were somewhat smaller than we’ve seen in previous years.

The tope also arrived on the further out marks and fish were caught to 40lbs.

However, once again, it wasn’t a classic year and bad weather stopped a lot of the fishing.

July saw the first of the mackerel shoals for the boats, but these fish were hit and miss and not appearing on all tides.

We also saw a big tope weighing in at 45lbs for Mick Frost on the Sophie Lea.

August was all about the bigger bass and I had some trips to St Osyth beach, with some great catches of bass in the 5lb to 6lb range, plus reports of a few double-figure fish from the boats.

On the whole, it’s been a good summer for beach, pier and boat anglers. The thornback ray size is slightly smaller than other years, but we’re definitely seeing a lot more ray being caught in a longer season.

The smoothhound season certainly hasn’t been as good and, once again, a smaller average fish has been caught.

Bass have certainly been at a premium and the European Commission brought in a three-fish daily bag and a minimum size of 42cm to help the fish stocks recover.

Clacton Angling Club headed for Walton Pier for their latest evening match.

Seventy-five fish were caught, which included bass, rays, sole, pouting and whiting.

In top spot was Dave Collett, with 211 points.

Second place went to Rob Tuck, with 162, and a close third was Doug Sadler, with 151.

The heaviest fish was a 35cm bass, caught by Dave Collett.

Clacton Pier has had a good week, with another insurge of thornback rays.

Matt Stewart found the biggest, weighing in at 9lb 4oz.

Chris Hayes also fished here during the week and landed a 3lb 2oz bass on a whole squid bait, presented on a pennel rig.

The Walton beaches have been showing some late bass, plus whiting and a few codling, with Sameer Jafferbeg (pictured) catching the biggest bass from the beaches to the right of the pier.

The tides for the weekend are 2.55pm on Saturday and 3.30pm on Sunday.