Scent, the Final Frontier
by Ken Kross
In this high-paced world of $35,000 bass boats, and tackle boxes
that have a value of one thousand dollars, it would seem like we
really don’t have any place left to expand. But there is, it's
scent, the final frontier.
Let me tell you how it happened. I
was taking inventory in my garage the other day in preparation
for a trip to Lake Oviachic, which I had booked with Ron Speed’s
Enterprises®. There were numerous phone calls back and forth and
I had my work cut out. First was selecting eight good rods and
about 10 or twelve reels, all loaded with either 17 # mono or
heavier, plus a selection of the new braided lines. The rods
ranged in size from 6 feet to 7 1/2 feet, fiberglass to graphite,
and various combinations of the two materials. My two 20 pound
plus tackle boxes, had to be narrowed down to one, one side worms
and the other side hard baits. I had made this trip before so I
had a good idea of what to bring and what not to bring. First,
out came all the little-bitty stuff, next out came all the lures
I hadn’t thrown in the last five years, lastly out came all the
triplicates and quadruples of the same color make and model. When
I finished with the hard baits I turned my box over and started
with the worm side. This is where my heart sank; you see, I love
to worm fish! Again, out came all the finesse worms and little
split shots, out came all the three inch grubs. In went the 6
inch lizards in greens, blacks and red, followed by the ten inch
worms and the 4/0 and 5/0 hooks, not to mention the one ounce egg
sinkers and the heavy barrel swivels. When I was done with this
chore, I let to two or three days go by, then I re-did it all
over again.
It was then when Stinky came over
for a pre-trip visit. He walked into my garage and did a double
take, then let out a soft whistle. "What are you
taking?" was he first question. You see, there were tackle
boxes here and there, all my light weight spinning rods and all
my light weight casting rods, plus bags, boxes and trays of light
weight spinnerbaits, crankbaits and three and four inch worms.
There were stacks of flipping sticks and big baitcasters. He
looked around for a moment and then said to "Do you know how
much money you have invested here?" I quickly looked around
for my wife before honestly answering "A lot!"
It was quite ironic then that the
entire trip, cost of vacation, air fare, lodging and guide
service, the rods, reels and lure-stuffed tackle boxes should all
boil down to an item that costs $5.99, less than the cost of a
good crankbait. You see the entire success of that trip to
Mexico hinged on a bottle of scent. It was what made and
almost broke the trip.
Scent attracts or repels almost every creature on
earth. We all know about how smell effects men and
women in both positive and negative ways, a pine forest smells
more attractive then a rotten egg. Smell affects dogs, sharks,
catfish, deer, everything that swims, flies walks or crawls.
Therefore as a Chemist and an ex-perfume maker, it is hard for me
to understand the resistant that some fishermen have when it
comes to acknowledging that scent plays a role in bass fishing.
Recently I heard a top pro at a seminar go on hour after hour
about presentation, location, line size, bait size, time of the
year, species and much more - but never mention scent.
Why? Let’s try and get a little
deeper into the world of the wonderful fish we all love, the
large or smallmouth bass. Lets' start with their birth. At first
they feed on micro-organisms and such. Now I’m sure
micro-organisms have a smell and taste, but to be quite honest I
can’t say for sure. But the next stage of a fry is the
fingerling. Fingerling feed on other fingerling of both their own
species and other species. As they grow they seek out fry of
shad, catfish, bluegill, talapia, crappie, carp or what ever else
is smaller then they are and will fit in their big mouth. The
first stimulus is either sight or sound, the second stimulus is
smell and taste.
A typical day for a bass of any
size, from fry to ten pounder goes something like this. Hide
from predators. Seek out and eat prey. That’s it, no TV,
no 9 to 5. Their entire life is filled with the fight or flight
syndrome. You see most of the time a bass is in a resting state
in cover, or positioned in an advantageous spot for ambushing a
meal. The first stimulus to always come into play, is probably sound.
A bass feels or hears his prey approaching first. This may be the
clicking of a crawfish as he digs around rocks for decaying
matter or it may be the hum of a school of baitfish moving in
unison and displacing large masses of water. The second stimulus
to always come in to play is sight.
We have now covered about 99% of what most fisherman think
fishing is all about - sound and sight. Throw a chartreuse
crankbait or spinnerbait in muddy water and a bass will feel the
vibration, home in on the sound and blast the plug. Throw a
Carolina rig and the bass will see the sinker kicking up silt and
nail the worm behind it. Unfortunately we all know that every
plug or worm is not attacked on every cast. Some days we even go
fishless after 12 hours on the lake, throwing every $20 imported
lure we were told would just slam the fish.
So what when wrong? Are we to
believe that in 12 hours and hundreds of cast we didn’t present
our bait in front of even one fish? Of course not. What happened
to the first two stimulus that we rely on so heavily for our
simple equation: Sight and Sound = Attack! Well today
the bass were in a negative mood. All the sight and sound just
made them pull in a little tighter to cover until the threat of
your lure was gone. They were having a bad hair day and we didn’t
adjust to that fact. Nor did we apply the final stimulus, scent.
When we arrived in Mexico, it was
a week before Christmas the fishing was not at its peak. The bass
hadn’t moved up to spawn yet and the fish all had a case of
lock jaw. We tried topwater in the morning, spinner baits in the
mesquites and were just about fishless at noon. We then went to
some humps and started to throw 6 inch worms loaded up with a
special fish oil scent attractant that I had been working on for
about 10 years for my own personal pleasure. It had always worked
for me and I had tremendous confidence in it. My partner was a
man who worked more then he fished, so he didn’t have the hours
of worm fishing experience to detect light biting fish. Well, for
two days we didn’t have to worry about that. The bass that were
in a negative mood and were ignoring all fast baits, would just
inhale our worms and then slowly swim off with them in their
mouth. Scent, the final stimulus that day proved to be the
most important. The second day was a repeat of the first, no
bite except on oil-drenched worms left sitting on the bottom, not
even moving. Then at about 10 AM we ran out of my fish attractant
formula. The fish stopped biting. We went on for hours
without a bite in the same place we had been killing them. Out of
desperation my partner started to smell every worm in my tackle
box until he found one that had been sprayed from the previous
day. He put that worm on and on the very next cast he started to
catch bass again. That moment was the birth of my company. We
took my private formula and started to market it.
If your scent will catch me even one more fish,
it’s worth putting it on. That's what a famous
pro said to me at a recent trade show. Why is it then that
fisherman think that the final stimulus that has been ingrained
in a bass’s strike response, is unimportant and of no meaning?
Why would a bass that has killed and eaten his way through his
life since he was a fry, ignore smell? If you think a crankbait
is a reflex lure think again. If you think a spinnerbait is a
reflex lure think again. A bass can swim a fast moving bait down
and smell and inspect it, then turn on the after-burners and just
turn way, that fast. He didn’t perceive the final stimulus
and simply turned away. Sure the dink may hit it, but what
about those 4 and 8 pounders? They didn’t get fat feeding on
the smell of plastic and steel and human sweat or gasoline.
There are many "fish attractants" out
in the market place. Most are water soluble and
come off after four or five cast then have to be reapplied. Most
are made up of sweet-smelling anise oil or some other nice
smelling thing so that the fisherman who buys it will like the
smell. The best attractant is one made out of heavy, natural
fish oils. Something that smells like fish and adheres for
hours upon hours on all sorts of plastic or metal baits. The
smell may be offensive to humans, but who cares if you are
catching fish on it. If you want to smell pretty, go buy some
anise cologne. If you want to cathc bass, you have to get back to
the basics, which are that bass are smart and want their meal to
smell like all the rest of the meals they have grown up with.
The bottom line is that I have
experimented with various different chemicals, oils, fruit scents
and things I don’t like to talk about. There are some
things out there that are proven stimulants. I have combined
these things into a fish oil base and have outfished good
fishermen 10-20 to their 1. No joke. This spring when you have to
fish used water behind 100 other fishermen who are all good and
flipping the same trees that you are, give yourself the edge, use
a good fish oil base attractant. When that hog swims over out of
curiosity, trigger that age old feeding response that she has
survived with. Give her that final stimulus and Kick Some Bass.
Remember, a good bottle of attractant costs
less then a good crankbait. Don’t buy all new lures and worms
this year, just treat them with a good bite stimulus and let
nature take it’s course.
And that's why I say that scent is the final
frontier!
--Ken Kross
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