Tope and Surdog Fishing
Fishing for tope (15-75 lb) and spurdogs (7-24 lb) make up the bulk of the shark fishing from Portpatrick.
Tope swim in small packs in relation to their individual weights and it is not unusual to catch up to 10 in a day if they move into your selected fishing area.
Spurdogs swim in massive packs (normally!) and its not unusual to catch up to 150 in a day and its quite likely that they will all be into double figures. We have landed many over the Scottish record and the best to date is 24 lbs.
Standard 30-50 lb class gear will suffice with a single flowing hook trace. I do not use wire traces and find that both sharks will bite through nylon under 150 lb strength. 150 lb-250 lb mono will work, combined with 6/0-8/0 hooks.
Bullhuss (5-22 lb) can also be caught at the same time using the same methods and same bait .
Most successful baits are mackerel (dead or alive!), whiting flapper and octopus or big dirty squid!
