DODGING THE DOGS
With the spells of autumnal gales come the huge packs of dogfish along many west coast beaches. If you like catching dogs, and in matches they are the obvious targets, then that's fine, but most anglers hate 'em. Unhooking your thirtieth during a night session when you're after cod or whiting isn't fun, so how do we avoid dogs?

Dogfish are more likely to move on to the beaches just after a blow when the sea starts to ease down a touch. You'll find that casting a consistent distance out to roughly the same spot sees a gradual decrease in the time it takes for a doggie to find and hit your bait. What's happening here is that you're building up a steady scent lane for the dogfish to follow and home in on. This trick is how good matchmen get a big bag of dogfish, they just don't tell anyone. If you want to catch fewer dogfish, alternate the distance you cast and vary the direction.

The best methods to dodge our dogfish friends

Another trick is to drop in close on the ebb targeting flatfish. Doggies won't risk being stranded in the shallows and push out to deeper water the minute the tide turns on shallower beaches. Conversely bang out long casts during the flood tide, especially after a storm. Most of the food gets washed in close to shore and the doggies come with it, but at range there are fewer dogs, but you'll still pick up whiting and codling that prefer deeper water.

Don't use fish baits. Dogfish prefer sandeel, mackerel and squid in that order, and are quite partial to crab too. Even tipping off a worm bait with a sliver of fish will increase your dogfish bite ratio. Obviously dogfish are not fussy and eat most anything they come across, but lugworm is a little lower down the list.

If you're casting short in to deeper water, use a rig with adjustable hook snood swivels on and slide the hook snoods up towards the top of the rig to get the bait off the seabed by keeping a tight line to the rod tip. Dogfish are less likely to swim up off the bottom for a bait, generally speaking. This is a good trick when you want whiting but are getting too many dogs.

Listen to the catch reports in your area. When the dogfish move on to the beaches they strip it clean leaving pretty much a barren wasteland devoid of food. Other species move off too, and it takes a few days for catches to get back to some normality. Avoid these beaches for a few tides to let the natural stock of other species build up again.

TIPS AND TRICKS
Whiting anglers tend to use fine wire Aberdeen type hooks on their traces, but this is a good time to reconsider. It's about now that the codling become more numerous and a decent codling can bend out a fine wire pattern at the strike or when being played.

Changing to a Mustad 3261 Aberdeen, or Kamasan equivalent in size 2 still accounts for the whiting, but hooks of this type have the strength to land double figure cod if played correctly.

TACKLE RECOVERY TACTICS

Rough ground a menace for tackle

Many anglers are put off fishing over rough ground due to heavy tackle losses, but there are ways you can reduce tackle, and more importantly hooked fish losses.

If you're casting directly in to rough ground, don't fully tighten your line to the lead to pull the rod tip over for bite detection. This only drags the lead tight in to any cracks between the rocks jamming it tight. Leave the line just slightly slack. Fish on rough ground are not shy biters and will hit and take a bait hard taking up any slack in the line and pulling hard on the rod tip.

Use pulley rigs as your main choice. Pulley rigs, as the name suggest, have the main rig body line sliding through the eye of a swivel. When a fish takes the bait and swims away it pulls the hook and rig line through the swivel attached to the leader and actually lifts the lead up and out of snags when fishing in deep water. The lead travels as far as the swivel with the length of the trace and rig running down to the fish keeping the lead well clear of any snags while the fish is fought.

Breakaway Lead Lifts are an essential part of my tackle box and help me reduce losses of both tackle and fish. These can be clipped above a lead and act like a plane wing lifting the weight of the lead quickly off the seabed making it rise in the water where it planes back towards you at speed. Lead Lifts are especially useful when you're fishing long range but have rough ground between you and the sand you aim to fish on.

There are also some makes of lead that have lifting vanes moulded in to their shape. These also lift off the seabed quickly and plane to the surface, but will still snag if cast directly in to rough ground.

Use plastic bait clips, or clips made from copper wire. These bend when snagged and will mostly pull free under pressure. Clips made from stainless wire in heavy gauges will not bend out easily and can cost you breakages. Also use hooks that will bend out under extreme line pressure. Northeast anglers favour Mustad Viking 79510 hooks in size 2/0 to 6/0 for cod for this reason.