With a pair of 225-hp four-stroke Hondas, the ûEverglades (the pilothouse version of the center console is shown here) gets 1.5 miles per gallon at 33 mph, which is about average for a twin-engine boat of this size.

Boatbuilders sometimes stumble when they push the envelope and keep building bigger and bigger boats. The legendary Boston Whaler, for example, came out with a diesel-powered 35-foot open cockpit fishing boat in the late 1990s that was, to put it mildly, far from its best effort. The builder stopped production of this boat in 2002, and now its largest boat is the outboard-powered 305 Conquest.

The builder of this month’s featured boat, Stephen and Bob Dougherty’s Everglades Boats, started small—with flats boats and V-hull bay boats—in the early 1990s. Since then, the duo has added a half-dozen center console fishing boats to its lineup. The largest boat, the 290, is offered…