Has the success of Berkley Maxscent baits changed peoples mind about the role scent plays?

[bowhunter63]

I agree , Slow days with a few bites you up your odds. I truly believe that .

[king fisher]

Scent can be a long one way road with no way to turn back.

     When I first started guiding for King Salmon in AK, there were two main ways to fish.  Back troll plugs, or drift salmon eggs.  Both methods worked well.  No one used scent, and everyone caught lots of fish.

      Then someone started putting garlic in their egg cure, that caught on like fire, and every guide smelled like garlic.  WD40 came next.  Even though eggs already have lots of natural scent, everyone thought you had to spray the eggs with WD40.  I do believe it helped, but quit using it after seeing oil slicks on the river.  I still use a rag soaked in WD40 to clean my plugs.  Next came custom cures that were expensive but were supposed to have all sorts of scientific developed pheromone scents.  Again I joined the band.  At this same time the number one technique was wrapping a sardine rap on a large quickfish plug.  Of course that took up lots of time and you had to take it off and clean them at the end of the day.  Many commercial scents were developed to put on plugs so you wouldn't have to wrap them, but none seemed to work near as well as the real thing.

       The next curve on the sent road, was preventing human scent from contacting your bait, or lure.  Everybody started wearing surgical gloves while fishing in order to keep human scent off of the bait.  I refused to join this bad for a few seasons, but eventually caved.  I hate wearing the gloves, but the clients see another boat hook a fish, and the guide has gloves on and I don't, not good for tips.  Now, not only do I wear gloves while fishing, I wear gloves while removing and curing the eggs, and while putting line on reels. I even have the clients wear them in case they touch the line or lure.

      Of course when we fly fish for kings, we don't use scent, or wear gloves, but still catch fish.  When I had the chance to get back in to bass fishing, I was so glad I could just tie on a lure and not have to feel like I was preparing for surgery.

   I hope using scent helps anglers catch bass, but fear it could be the first step down a long road.

[Bankc]

In order for scent to be an attractant, it has to disperse into the water.  If a plastic bait did that, it would dissolve in the water in a short time.  Since they don't, you can assume they don't work well for attracting fish.  And even if they did disperse into the water, like a spray on scent, you're probably not leaving the bait in the water long enough to allow the scent to disperse and give the fish time to track it down.  So you might get a use out of a spray on scent if you do something like a dropshot and leave the bait in the water for several minutes at a time.  But you'll still have to reapply it often and recast to the same spot.  And that's assuming that bass use scent to hunt down prey, which they're not really known to do.  Scent does play a big role in some fish though, like catfish and carp.  

 

That being said, they probably do work well for keeping the fish on the bait longer, once they've bitten down.  So they might help you land more fish by giving you more time to set the hook.  And they might even give the illusion of more strikes by giving you more time to feel the strike.  But I don't see how they would actually illicit more strikes. 

 

So really, scent is probably a bad term.  We should probably refer to it as taste.  Berkley Maxtaste.  

[Cgolf]

1 hour ago, Glenn said:

Here are my thoughts. Do you agree or disagree?

 

 

 

Both I guess would be the answer.

 

I use a gel scent that if you look at the water as you pull it out you can see a slight sheen on the surface, so it is coming off the bait at a slower pace than say Bang or Berkley liquid scents. I do agree fish will likely hold on longer as well.

 

I do believe it gets more bites though. The father in law and I fished and in an hour I had landed multiple fish and he never got a hit. I got him to put scent on without changing baits, and he had his first hit in 5 casts and landed his first fish in 5 minutes. He was a skeptic at that point, but all he changed was adding scent. Also if bass can hold off on baits that smell like gas, nicotine, etc, you would think they more willingly strike a lure that smells like a craw or shad than an unscented lure. The thing we will never know is just what percentage more that is. All I know is for me I have witnessed it make enough of a difference especially during a tough bite or pressured fish to be a lifetime user.

 

Berkley crappie nibbles were my starting point to pick your favorite gel scent now.

 

 

[BassNJake]

My former tourney partner swears by megastrike.

He puts it on every lure and religiously reapplies. 

He says it might not be the reason for every fish he catches but he wont let it be the reason why he didn't catch a fish.

[Team9nine]

Agree or disagree? I think despite the overall neutral stance, the opening and closing segments suggest to me you at least lean in favor of. I still struggle to understand the position expressed my many that "at least it can't hurt." In the video, you state the bass is documented to have scent ability 1,000 times greater than a dog, yet it seems that people refuse to then give credit to the bass that it can't detect that scent, whatever it is used, as different, negative or "fake," or even say associate that scent/smell to a negative experience after being caught on it. So a bass has a fantastic sense of smell, but is too stupid to recognize what it is smelling unless it is one of the negative cues mentioned?

 

I also agree with Bankc that the terms are getting confused; there is smell and there is taste, and they are two separate components and parts of the bass feeding/sense process. A "scent" that makes a bass hold onto it longer isn't a scent at all, but a taste, and maybe scent plays absolutely no (or very little) role in whether a fish bites or not, but it is the taste component that matters, something none of us could quantify as nobody "tastes" their applied scents, except in the rare instance of accidental exposure one person mentioned, and the gag response it elicited - because our taste and impressions would be completely different than a basses, most likely. Also, it could be assumed then that certain tastes (scents) might elicit positive or negative responses on the part of the bass (as suggested by the gas, tobacco, sunscreen mention), and you would likely only determine favorability based on whether you caught the fish or not. You could potentially still catch the fish before he could spit the bait out even though he didn't like it's "taste," and wrongly assume the "scent" worked just because you caught the fish.

 

Just some more ramblings...

[J Francho]

I sometimes catch fish after putting something that tastes and smells bad to me on my baits.

[Team9nine]

2 hours ago, J Francho said:

I sometimes catch fish after putting something that tastes and smells bad to me on my baits.

So, the follow-up question then is, do you then credit that “something” as the reason for why you caught that fish? If the answer is yes, you might be a scent believer ?

[J Francho]

11 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

So, the follow-up question then is, do you then credit that “something” as the reason for why you caught that fish? If the answer is yes, you might be a scent believer ?

I would answer that that something that has odor or flavor to me might have helped, but I'm not sure it was the scent or odor itself that got me the bites. If that makes any sense..

[Team9nine]

28 minutes ago, J Francho said:

I would answer that that something that has odor or flavor to me might have helped, but I'm not sure it was the scent or odor itself that got me the bites. If that makes any sense..

 

Sounds like it puts you in the “It can’t hurt” camp...

[Scott804]

On 6/2/2021 at 2:06 PM, TOXIC said:

I’m in the camp that scent is used to mask other smells/tastes that may be present on the lure or to tempt the fish to hold the bait a little longer but I have reeled in a lot of fish who bit Yamamoto plastics, which have no scent, and held on all the way to the boat without ever getting stuck by the hook.  I don’t like the power bait and other plastics that have to be stored in their magic juice or away from other plastics.  

I am fairly sure the reason they hold onto Yamamoto plastics is because of high salt content, which could arguably probably be considered scent. I have tried The General with Maxscent & it performs similarly to a GYBC senko, whereas I did not have nearly as much luck with a Yum Dinger. While it is only anecdotal, I believe this is due to scent. I think part of the reason the senko has left the mark that it has is because it was 'scented' before being scented was a big deal.