Something Smells Fishy

In their never-ending quest to catch more and bigger fish, anglers have tried everything from bait-blasting cannons to blinking bionic lures. They’ve also tried every trick in the book when it comes to tempting fish senses beyond sight, creating lures that mimic the scent and taste of the real thing. There was a time when low-tech products thrived: gels and pastes you could smear on a spoon, bottled fish oil that could be added to a chum slick, and plugs with hollow chambers meant to be filled with aromatic attractants. You can still find these products on the market today, but now lure makers have gone high-tech. In the modern age, they bake that fishlike taste right into seductively wiggling soft plastics.

Science Or Snake Oil?

The first question any sentient angler wants answered: Do scented lures really work better than unscented ones, or is it all hype?

“Our baits have proven their efficacy around the world,” says Fishbites vice president of marketing and advertising Courtney Woznek. “Fishbites are based on science and work on the same principles as natural baits, releasing chemicals that dissolve into the water and create a powerful scent trail. Fish detect those scents, track them, and attempt to eat. When the fish strikes, it also gets the flavor associated with the scent, which is why we call out attractants ‘flavor/scents.’ Our cut baits also have a texture that mimics natural prey, so fish tend to bite longer on Fishbites than other artificial baits, giving you a better chance to set the hook.”

Woznek also notes that the company’s soft plastic lures actually aren’t plastic at all, which is part of why they work so well. “Our Fight Club lures are made from a hydrogel that interacts with the surrounding water, releasing the flavor/scents that have been infused in them,” she explains, while also noting the lures are biodegradable. “Anglers have said over and over that they prefer our lures over comparable products because of the durability of our baits, the mess-free experience, and the catch ratio compared to others.”

Mark Sexton, Berkley’s manager of Fish Science and Product Testing, also points to science-based success. “We test different compounds with the goal of unlocking the fish’s chemo-receptors (the olfactory and gustatory systems fish use to smell and taste, essentially like a human’s nose and taste buds), as many as possible. That’s how we trigger the fish to make a decision. The decision to eat.”

Still, it’s not difficult to find naysayers, and no wonder considering that virtually every “scientific” study out there measuring the effectiveness of scent- or flavor-enhanced lures has the name of a lure maker associated with it in one way or another. However, there are peripheral studies that lend credence to the concept. Studies related to aquaculture, for example, have concluded that when the fish’s gustatory system is exposed to a range of compounds, including those found in some enhanced artificial lures, a feeding response is triggered (Morais, 2016). Others confirm that threshold concentrations for taste and species preferences are determined genetically and play a critical role in a fish’s sensory evaluation during the feeding process (Kasumyan, 2003). Still, one wonders.

Taste Test

Figuring out exactly what makes a fish grab something and hold it, or not, can be difficult. We aren’t fish, and any attempt to think like one is rife with the potential for misinterpretation. Through time and testing, however, there’s plenty of evidence supporting the notion that, at least in some circumstances, scented soft plastics are almost certainly more effective than unscented ones.

“We field test each lure extensively, fishing for 20 minutes with A versus B, with different anglers switching between different offerings,” Sexton says of Berkley’s baits. “Ninety-five percent of the time our field results match our lab results.” So when they print “Fish hold on 18x longer” on the package, they mean it.

Personal experience bears this out. I became a believer in Berkley’s Powerbait, a PVC soft plastic impregnated with compounds that fool a fish into thinking it tastes like the real thing, years ago while untangling a backlashed reel as my lure sat motionless on the bottom. A large croaker picked it up and swam away. Rather than rejecting it as one would expect from a piece of tasteless plastic, the fish ate it. After pulling in the line by hand, unhooking the fish, then tossing the lure back over the side to continue working on the tangle, it happened a second time. And just this past fall I tried using Fishbites artificial EZ Baits side-by-side with natural squid and live minnow for black sea bass (rotating among 10 different anglers through the course of two days) and came up with a perfect 50/50 catch ratio between the Fishbites artificial baits and the real thing. Added bonus: While the squid made inky stains all over my boat, and squid and minnow require special care to keep in good condition, the Fishbites proved mess-free and could be stowed in my tacklebox.

Looking Down Your Nose

If there’s little doubt that stinky, tasty lures can give an angler an edge, why do people still buy unscented plastics? There are a few additional factors in play. Every ingredient added to the plastic’s brew can have effects on the lure beyond just taste and smell. To get the right mix of carriers and compounds, the lure’s coloration, flexibility, and ruggedness can all change. That’s why some scented artificials seem to have muted visual vibrance, others may not wiggle with quite as much vigor, or some rip easily. Each combination is a bit different, so any one particular lure may exhibit one, none, or all of these traits. Some check all of these boxes but are water soluble, so they shrink and become rock-hard if left exposed to the air for too long. Some are packaged in schmaltz that might do a great job of attracting fish but also makes an epic mess that’s very difficult to scrub away if spilled. And most also cost more than regular soft plastics – in some cases twice as much.

Despite the downsides, so many people have discovered how effective this stuff is that they’ll buy these attractants in additional forms like bottled “juice” or prepackaged strips and use them to enhance other types of lures or even natural baits. Which brings us full circle, right back to those goops and glops people have been slathering over artificial lures for years. With one important difference: Snake oil has been replaced with science. And if you’d like to trick more fish into biting, stimulating their senses beyond sight alone will help make it happen.