Scent Or No Scent

[TMDKENNELS]

I know that bass use their sense of smell to find food but do the scents on the market truly increase your chances of catching bass?

I've been using a crayfish scent and it hasn't done me any good.

[North Ga Hillbilly]

Youll get all sorts of responses on this. I think that scents cover up our smells more than tricking the fish into thinking its a crawdad or trout or whatever. That being said I've got some pro cure coming my way next week.

NGaHB

[Sam]

Try to find a copy of Dr. Keith A. Jones book, Knowing Bass, The Scientific Approach to Catching More Fish, The Lyons Press.

Chapter Three, Chemoreception discusses smell and taste tests Dr. Jones and Berkley conducted regarding many tastes and smells and chemical sensitivity.

If you use the search feature on this site and type in Keith Jones you may find a previous post I made regarding the bass' organs of taste and smell.

I use scents as a confidence builder and to have the bass hold onto the bait a few seconds longer. I like MegaStrike the best, followed by Carolina Lunker Sauce and if I want garlic I go with JJs Magic.

Good luck.

[Sam]

Search for "scents" and look up the article about mixing and matching scents.

[Sam]

Here is the link:

Mixing Fish Attractants/scents

in Fishing Tackle

Started by airborne_angler, Apr 23 2012

Last Post by Sam, Apr 23 2012

[msolorio]

i think it does to an extent. bass, fish in general dont smell like we smell. ive had grreeaat success with megastrike and pro cure. i use it almost all the time. i have noticed that fish hold on longer which in turn allows you to get a "second" chance if you dont feel her the first time she takes the bait and it gets you a few more bites. not all scents are created equal so choose wisely. my recommendatios, megastrike, pro-cure, pookees, and smelly jelly.

[BassinNY]

I always have a tube of Megastrike with me. It just works!!

[Bluebasser86]

I use scents on slow moving baits a lot of the time. They might not help much but I believe they don't hurt anything and at least cover up any bad smells on my bait.

[Scooter1]

X2

[iceintheveins]

I use scents on slow moving baits a lot of the time. They might not help much but I believe they don't hurt anything and at least cover up any bad smells on my bait.

X3

[bigbill]

I firmly believe that using scents covers up our human natural sceont and the oders that are in our tackleboxes. Now they say they attract fish. When i used scent everyday in the same spot even the people near me caught bass too. The current was going away from me so it attracted fish to me, they came in closer.

My best results have been using lures with orange colored bottoms, the lures having a rattle and using a scent too. All lures work at onetime or another its figuring which color and type will produce more fish for you in your area. You just need to figure out what natural bait there eating.

[Traveler2586]

This is a subject that has been around for many, many, years. If you ask five people you get six opinions.

If you read the link above "Mixing fish Attractants" you saw that Worm Extract had 100% strike response.

I have to wonder if this isn't something akin to chumming, i.e. using ground live bait to attract fish.

When I was young we would hang a chum bucket over the side of the boat while trolling for Blue's on the Chesapeake, it worked well.

I wounder if the same technique would work on Bass to induce a feeding frenzy?

[JellyMan]

I use some scent I got from BPS years back. Not sure what it's called but it smells like whatever Zoom uses plus a hint of garlic. Smells good actually. 90% of the scents on the market smell HORRID and keeps me away from using them but the one I got is great.

I have had no issue with catching fish with it. If anything, it might have helped a tiny bit with bass strikes and holding on just a split second longer.

Any time I get new plastics I give the bag a spray to keep them lubed and smelly.

If you are looking for some miracle scent that will induce every bass into striking then I think you are out of luck. Bass will bite when they wanna bite. I have personally watched about a crayfish go onto a bed where a bass was and the bass nosed down on the crayfish for a second and it looked like the cray pinched him. The bass actually left the bed until the crayfish was gone. It wanted nothing to do with it. If they dont bite they're favorite foods when they are live and well, scent wont do a dam thing.

[unionman]

I only use two scents. Garlic and Crawfish.

Garlic is my fav. Rage tails coffee scent awesome too. It doesnt stink up my truck.

[OkobojiEagle]

Both Megastrike and Berkley Bass Scent do an admirable job of lubricating Texas rigged hooks and jigs at the bend allowing them to slip through the plastic more easily on my hook set.

oe

[smalljaw67]

I don't believe that scent attracts fish but I firmly believe it does help making the fish hold on a second or two longer and that helps with hook ups. I don't use any scent no reaction baits like spinnerbaits or crankbaits but jigs and worms I do. I use CB's Hawg Sauce crawfish scent, I remember I was fishing for smallies on the river and the water was low and gin clear which made the fish spooky and they didn't want to bite. I finally found an area that had overhanging trees and the fish were holding in the shade, I would pitch my 1/4oz jig and zoom chunk next to the bank under the trees and I would get a bite and ste the hook and nada.... It happened 5 times, I then decided to give it a spritz of the hawg sauce that I won in a contest, I don't remember why I had it with but I did and so I put the hawg sauce on my jig and my next pitch got me a nice solid 3lb smallie! It actually made a difference that day and now I always have some hawg sauce for jigs and worms.

[Bobby Uhrig]

You know I have been very quiet here for a while and we are in the most controversal topic in the fishing industry. I have been working for a year on a new technology to enhance YES I AM USING THE WORD "ATTRACTANT" From what i have been testing in tanks and the wild- HMMMM watch and learn--

They never did explain what worm extract was did they-- How many worms do you really think a bass sees in its life time- They are pretty much land creatures - Its whats in the worm that the fish are eating- HMMMM

[Team9nine]

No scent...

-T9