Animal Fishing help needed

I am going animal fishing soon - tope etc but have never done this type of fishing before. Any advice on bait, traces, techniques would be most welcome.

Paul.

Hi Paul

I am assuming it is off a boat?
If not the august edition of Irish Angler has an excellent article from Brian Cooke et al on how to land them from the shore!

RSVP

and I now stock tope traces !!

Luke Scully be the Tope man I believe :wink: .

Paul

Main thing here is to have a fresh supply of Mackeral and some nice rubby dubby. Animal competitions normally cover the following species:-
Doggies, Bull Huss, Smoothhound, Spurdog, Ray's, Tope, Gurnard etc. Clean fish e.g. Cod, Whiting, Pollack, Wrasse etc. don't count. Traces are made according to the species you are going to target, bigger hooks for Tope, Ray and so on. It means sitting at anchor (nice and relaxing when things are quite) with anything from a 1 hook to a 3 hook trace in the water. The rubby dubby (Mackeral, Pilchard Oil and a few other bits minced together) is normally put in an onion net and lowered on a weight when at anchor to attract the fish. If your in the right place you can get some great fights from these fish.
There's an animal competition coming up very shortly in Bray hosted by one of the local clubs.
Damien

WHEN I GO ANIMAL FISHING OFF THE BOAT I USE; ITS LIKE A 3UP FLAPPER EXCEPT INSTEAD OF CLIPPING YOUR WEIGHT ON THE BOTTOM OF THE TRACE CLIP IT ONTO A BOOM ABOVE THE TRACE.AND IF YOUR AFTER DOGS REMBER THE RULE LOTS OF ORANGE BEADS ON YOUR SNOOD :wink: