ARE SCENT PRODUCTS THE SMELL OF SUCCESS - Captain Mike Schoonveld

November 18, 2025

Did those lures fail to pass the “sniff” test? If so was it because the lure didn’t have a smell to it or did it have a funky, warning smell? It could have been either.

In the author’s tests, lake trout seemed to react positively to garlic scented lures.

I was methodically swapping out lures to see if I could find the magic one which would turn a not-bite into a hot bite. My dad, not an avid fisherman, was with me so the pressure was on. Nothing was working and then I remembered the bottle of stuff I’ll call Captain Hook’s Magic Salmon Elixir.

I don’t remember the real name of the potion and it certainly wasn’t magic. But to keep Dad’s enthusiasm up (and my hopes) I squirted a dose of the oily lotion on the Northport Nailer I was about to send into the depths.

The water was calm, the sun was high and as the lure hit the water an oily sheen floated on the surface of the lake as the bulk of Captain Hook’s concoction washed off. “Looks like all of it just washed off the lure,” Dad said. He wasn’t an avid fisherman, but he was observant.

I explained in tone reminiscent of Billy Mays pitching OxyClean on a TV infomercial, “Captain Hook says just enough sticks to the lure to leave a slight trail of scent for a hungry fish to home in on and coax it to strike.” About then a hungry salmon bit the lure and the fight was on.

I didn’t for a minute think the scent product I’d applied was the major factor in getting that fish on the line. I actually thought it was just blind luck, more than anything. I’d used the magic elixir a few times previously with zero results. I was a skeptic.

Dad, however, instantly became a true believer. Not only did he make me anoint all the other lures in our spread, I had to make sure a bottle was handy the next time and the next when he came fishing with me, even though it never produced the instant results like it did the first time.

Since then, I’ve remained a skeptic when it comes to “magical” scent products when it comes to fishing for salmon and trout—and for a variety of reasons. For one, I’d guess Captain Hook’s stuff was as much “snake oil” as it was a product backed by any science or research.

It’s best to wash gel-type lures after each use using dish soap or other degreaser.

In the 1800s, traveling entrepreneurs with a gaudy wagons and convincing sales pitches peddled cure-all elixirs across the country. Part whiskey, part cod liver oil, maybe with a pinch of opium, mint or garlic. Print a fancy label for the bottle and they were in business.

I’m not saying all “fish attractants” are hoaxes, but some are. I’m also sure some “home-brewed” attractants work well and that some major fishing companies spend more time designing the label and container for their product than developing the actual product. So be skeptical.

FISHY SCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY

First fact—fish have the sense of smell and just as in humans, that sense is co-mingled with the sense of taste. Some things smell good and whet the appetite. It could be cookies baking for you, it could be the scent of a nightcrawler to a fish—it could be the scent of garlic to both men and muskies.

Some things smell awful to humans and a whiff of it signals danger, like mercaptan put in natural gas to give it a skunky smell. Some things, no doubt, smell awful to fish and cause them to shy away.

Some fish, like carp and catfish locate food almost entirely with their sense of smell. A few rely primarily on their eyesight to find food. A brook trout doesn’t smell that fly floating down the stream. It sees it, it eats it. A catfish can’t see that chicken liver on a hook in a muddy river, but it can smell it and will happily gulp it down.

Most fish rely on both sight and smell. Whether they use more sight than scent to find their next meal or more scent than sight depends on the circumstances—both environmental and the mood of the fish—perhaps the wariness of the fish. I’ve seen fish pounce on a lure the second they spot it. No sniffing, just see it and react. I’ve seen other fish sneak in on a lure only to refuse it and I’ve watched underwater videos made with cameras attached to downriggers where fish repeatedly came up behind a lure, then turned away.

Did those lures fail to pass the “sniff” test? If so was it because the lure didn’t have a smell to it or did it have a funky, warning smell? It could have been either.

I was perch fishing with my cousin Steve one day near South Bass Island in Lake Erie. Our set ups were identical, our minnows came from the same bucket, I was outfishing him about five to one. “I stink,” Steve said. I think he meant his fishing skills were poor. But it didn’t take any skill. Hook on a minnow, drop down to the bottom and reel up a perch.

I wanted to help so I said, “Let me show you how I’m hooking my minnow.” He dangled his hook over to me, I stuck a minnow on his hook.”

Is this lure being contaminated while it’s being tuned?

He said, “That’s exactly how I’ve been doing it.” Then he dropped it down and instantly got a bite. “Bait my hook again,” he asked. I did and he instantly caught another. Maybe he did stink—at least to the fish.

Three or four decades ago some scientist (or snake oil salesman) identified a particular amino acid present in human skin and, more or less scientifically, showed it to be repellant to fish. They also claimed some people’s skin (particularly the skin on their fingers) exude more of this amino acid than others. Of course, the punch line to these claims was, “Buy my product which either washes the amino acid away, or disguises the stinky stuff and fish will be willing to bite your lures.”

I’ve also heard the same pitch given to sunscreen. “Their brand stinks to fish. Ours smells good.” I’ve seen tips given by pros saying one of the keys to their success is to fastidiously wash their hands after handling sunscreen, gasoline, egg McMuffins or other items.

Most of the Great Lakes trollers I’ve fished with, whether they are after salmon, trout or walleyes, don’t much worry about the scent on their lures—either good scent or bad. A few have been almost anal about it.

One was a guy I fished with in Lake Superior who brought a couple stalks of rhubarb with him and scrubbed each lure with a rub of fresh rhubarb before sending it into the depths. Why he did that and how he determined rhubarb was the key is a long story.

I like rhubarb and have a patch planted at my house, but it doesn’t smell or taste like anything I’d think a fish would enjoy eating. In fact, if Captain Hook’s oily elixir washed off the lure almost immediately, I can only suspect whatever rhubarb smell was on the lures we used on Gitcheegumee washed away even more rapidly. Perhaps rhubarb’s acidic juice washes lures clean of human oils, amino acids and McMuffin smells so the lure at least doesn’t smell repellant.

I didn’t rhubarb-rub any of the lures I set that day and our catch rate was the same. Maybe my amino acids aren’t as stinky as Bob’s. Maybe the next day would have been different. Maybe Bob’s lures would have been just as scent-free if he’d used a detergent or soap product on them.

ADDING SCENT

I know if I thought my hands or my lures smelled so repellant to the fish that I needed to apply a masking scent, I’d wash them with soap or detergent or handle the lures wearing latex gloves. I’d strive to keep the lures scent free rather than just cover up the negative odors. So when doing the research for this article, I didn’t look for products which advertised they hide or disguise human odors. I wanted to find the product fish just couldn’t resist.

The author tested products from leading fish scent producers all season. How did it work?

I have experimented with products claiming to imbue a positive odor to fishing lures many times over the years, from Captain Hook’s elixir to products with a long history and a bevy of positive reviews from satisfied users. For this project I selected three specific fish scent marketers to experiment with this season and I used them “semi-religiously” from early spring on through the summer. I used products from Pro Cure, Old Salt and Pautzke Fire Gel.

My goal wasn’t to test one product against the others, rather, to test lures with an application of scent and compare them to lures which had no scent applied to them. I did this two different ways. On some I ran the lure first with no scent, then I pulled the lure, added scent and reset the lure exactly as it was. Then I’d wait to see if the scent made any difference. On others say a double orange crush spoon when steelhead fishing or a red Rattlin’ ThinFin when targeting cohos (lures for which I always have back-ups) I would start with a scented version, catch a couple of fish with it then swap it for a clean, unscented lure to see if the fish become reluctant to bite it.

RESULTS

I’m sure my testing scheme would hardly pass the “sniff test” if I provided my methods and data to a professional researcher. Even if I’d had overwhelmingly positive results, completely negative results or anything in between, the statistician would say any result I produced was inconclusive. If there had been 50 of us all doing the same thing, that would be better or if I’d done the tests on 500 fishing trips instead of 50 perhaps I could say, “Yep, Captain Hook’s stuff is positively just snake oil or that one or some of the products I tried will reliably pay off in additional bites when it’s being used.

I can’t say that. The only thing I can say with much personal confidence is I don’t ever think it hurt anything. I never had a lure which was getting regular bites become a dud when I spritzed it with Old Salt or smeared it with Fire Gel. I can say there were a few times when the addition of some scent to a lure which was not being bit, like the time I was fishing with Captain Hook and my dad, got instant results.

Often, however, as in my opening anecdote, it was a one-off occurrence. A few times the scented lure remained hot enough that I added the same scent to a similar lure on the other side of the boat and it didn’t perform any magic. I wish I’d found a product that out-shined all the others.

I wish I’d have found a product which always, or even nearly always, improved the performance of a lure or a variety of lures. I didn’t and I remain a skeptic.

NEARLY MAGICAL RESULTS

Each of these companies produce multiple “flavors” of scent. Some purport to be shrimp scent, others are alewife, emerald shiner and many other smells fish are likely to encounter. One brand has a product labeled Panfish and one of the other companies makes a scent called Salmon. I don’t know if they are supposed to smell like panfish or salmon or if it’s a scent cohos and bluegills are supposed to find attractive.

If you gave me a blind “sniff” test of a chunk of real tuna, a shiner, shrimp, herring and alewife I don’t think I could identify any of them. I sniffed all of the scent products I tried and none of them smelled much like any tuna, shrimp, alewife or crawdads I’ve whiffed in the past. Perhaps the lure makers are able to concentrate or isolate the specific smells from these creatures.

There were a couple of smells I was able to identify easily and one of them is a fish attractant with a long history. Anise, the oil used to give black licorice its distinctive smell and flavor, has been used to scent fishing lures for decades.

When a fish comes aboard it’s hard to tell if it bit the lure because of its look or its smell.

On a trip to the Detroit River last May I was the being slammed by my fishing companions. Zero for me, one or more for each of the other three guys. So I grabbed one of the bottles of scent I’d brought along—the anise—and gave my jig a spritz of the licorice juice. I dropped down and the result was instant, fish on! Wow! I dutifully continued to anoint my jig on subsequent drops. I didn’t catch another walleye for next half-hour, but my partners sure did.

Apparently, as a walleye jigger, I stink—regardless of the smell of my jigs.

The other smell I could easily identify, and a flavor each of the lure makers I tested included in their product line was garlic. Perhaps garlic has a long history as a fish attractant but I’d never heard of it until I fished with a Lake Superior charter captain who stopped in Kenosha to fish with his cousin before jumping on my boat for a couple days here in Indiana. His cousin stuffed chopped garlic soaked in vegetable oil in Brad’s Cut Plugs—a hollow lure designed to hold some sort of scent—usually herring strips, fresh alewife, canned tuna or other products.

We used the garlic-stuffed cut plugs on my boat with limited results, but I have experimented with other garlic products since. I’ve found it particularly effective for lake trout, but I have caught several kings and cohos on lures that smelled like Emeril Lagasse’s kitchen.

OIL, GREASE AND CLEAN-UP

Obviously, water-based rhubarb juice would be quick to wash off a lure, whether it’s being trolled, cast or jigged. The products I used for this article were either oily or greasy—think vegetable oil and Vaseline. As my dad and I noticed with the oily Captain Hook scent, it looks like most of the oily products wash off in the first couple of seconds and when I would bring in an “oiled” lure after being trolled for a half hour or more I couldn’t smell or feel any scent or residue. Maybe there was enough for a fish to detect, maybe not.

When I used the thick, grease-like scents, there was a residue. The smell, at least to my human nose was missing or diluted, but the slime remained. If I forget to clean the residue, it’s still there the next time I grabbed the lure, except for the goop that rubbed off on the tackle box or on other lures it touched. Rhubarb won’t clean off a scent-greased lure.

Dishwashing liquid will. I remove all the scented lures when I’m done with them and put them in a separate plastic container to isolate them. Then at home, I add warm water and dish soap to the container, wash and rinse. I use whatever brand of dish soap my wife has stocked under the sink. Some guys swear lemon scented products are better than other detergents.

CONFIDENCE BUILDER

I know for certain that fish will bite a scented lure. I know for certain some fish will bite dirty, stinky, human-smelling lures. I’m confident some fish have bitten a scented lure which would have been snubbed except for the scent. “Confident” is the operative word in the preceding sentence.

Every angler will catch more fish with a lure they are confident will catch something than with a lure in which they lack confidence. Though I remain a skeptic that scenting a lure is always a game-changer, I now keep a vial or two of scent products on my boat and find myself using them more now than I have previously. I’m still a skeptic, but as I mentioned earlier, it never hurts.