How artificial bait scents can help you catch more fish

Artificial scents and bait can catch more fish

Using any kind of scent to catch fish can be very good for your fishing but it does get confusing with all of the different claims all of the fishing scent manufactures make. Do they all work, aren't they all pretty much the same?

I've tried a couple of dozen different things in that area over the years. Everything from Dr. Juice to WD 40. Scented worms, grubs and even scented twister tails. While nothing I'm going to tell you here is scientifically proven you will learn what has worked for me while I was fishing and how I tested it.

My grandfather and my father both believed that spitting on their bait helped them catch more fish. Funny but I never believed that as they both smoked, as I do. I let them spit on theirs and I never did and we always all caught about the same amount of fish. To me it didn't and doesn't work.

The next thing they came up with was using some anise flavored junk to squirt on their live bait. I really hated the smell of it and I only used it a couple of times because the results were I caught a lot more bullheads and so did they. Without using the anise scented stuff I did better than they did on whatever species we were fishing for, walleyes, crappies, northern pike or even perch, except bullheads. There are three fish I don't care if I ever catch, bullheads, carp and eelpout. Anise worked well on all of them for some reason.

The next thing they tried was WD 40 and I laughed at them pretty hard. That is until I noticed they were catching more fish on average than I was. Not a lot more but enough so that I could see a difference. So I tried it and we were all back to even in the amount of fish we caught. Then I didn't know why it worked but a few years later I read something that explained it. WD 40 is made from a fish emulsion or fish oils. Wow that really surprised me. I'll bet you didn't know that either. BTW, WD 40 stands for Water Displacement and the 40 came in because it was the fortieth thing they had tried.

Then Berkley or someone else, maybe a bass fishing company came out with scented worms. Now I don't fish for anything that bites on scented worms. Mostly I fish for Northern Pike, Walleyes, Perch, Crappies, Bluegills and other panfish. I never fished for bass because I lived in Minnesota and hardly anyone fished for bass. I never got around to trying the first scented worm baits as I figured they were just going to be bullhead bait.

You see all the bass fishing pros on TV and in magazines telling you that scent works and they all try to push their favorites. Scented lures, fishing spoons, grubs, worms and twister tails have become a very big business for the companies that make such things. I've never tried them for bass, where all the bass pros say they work, ah, but they get paid to say that don't they, but I have tried them for other things.

Fishing with scented twister tails and artificial grubs, baits and lures > >

Artificial scents and bait can catch more fish

Fishing Navigation:

Fishing Scents

Fishing Tips

Ice Fishing Tips

Misc Fishing Articles

Items of Interest