scent delivery - salmon scenter?

[Rum Buddies]

http://www.salmonuniversity.com/me_salmon_scenter.html

Just curious if anyone's tried this or used anything like it?

What about saving your old anchovy and mashing them up in a pair of pantyhose and dragging them off your downrigger?

Hokey or worth an experiment?

 

[otter]

Probably dont need the mashed anchovy.

 

[Rum Buddies]

ya well hey you don't need flashers, downriggers, a nice boat etc. but i don't see how a large scent trail could hurt?

Really I was just bored and came across that scenter on salmon university, in the end its just chumming - I'm curious if anyone has tried anything along those lines?

 

[Brisco]

Wouldn't that change the voltage off your rigger line?

 

[Dogbreath]

quote:Originally posted by brisco

Wouldn't that change the voltage off your rigger line?

LOL!!

 

[fishin_magician]

quote:Originally posted by Poppa Swiss

ya well hey you don't need flashers, downriggers, a nice boat etc. but i don't see how a large scent trail could hurt?

Really I was just bored and came across that scenter on salmon university, in the end its just chumming - I'm curious if anyone has tried anything along those lines?

I call it an American invention.

There was a thread on scent fishing on FishBC a while back and IronNoggin, who commercial fishes, said that Sockeye and Pinks are more usually suckers for adding scent thing, however, he was kinda on the fence about Coho and Chinook.

West Coast fishers pull the scent and smelly jelly thing all the time, but on the inside when I've tried it I had limited success. However, the fish did choose the lines with the scent on it.

I've run into a couple of guys and they have determined that the scent thing was actually a deterent in Georgia Strait, why I don't know. They scrubbed the boat, "de slimed and cleaned" everything, and started catching fish. Putting scent on one rigger, and none on the other, the one without started catching....changing lures up and the unscented stuff worked by a large margin.

Didn't matter what scent they used either.

I know the Salmon University pulls for the scent thing pretty hard advocating Smelly Jelly, the scent bags etc etc.

I'd say I'd focus on lures and finding the fish over anything else.

In the Charlottes, if there are fish around, it doesn't matter what you put down, no scent required, fish GALORE! Spoons, Plugs, Hootchies, you're catching left, right and center. Never did try the scent thing up there, but I can tell you that having one guy on the boat with a camera that clipped onto the downrigger, many fish came up so fast I don't think smell had anything to do with biting.

I remember trolling through some bait once, watching a shadow/salmon turn from about 20 feet back of the cutplug, and then SCREAM full on towards my cutplug. Needless to say, the rod only dove and the fish was peeling out 100 yards of line in like 10 seconds!!!

I think at certain times, Scent can make a difference.

 

[Last Chance]

That one has probably caught more fishermen then fish I'll bet. I'll go with scent being important to bottom fish, but for trolling, I don't know of a lot of critters that leave a trail of something that says "eat me".

 

[Brisco]

I would love someone to come up with a list of all the must have items to go salmon fishing.Lures with lights, the M.X. 5000 ect.To become a member of the tyee club I believe you go out in a rowboat with a rod and a spoon.There are more people coming up with gizmos than there are coho left in Georgia Straight.

 

[dohboy]

i would wonder if that would help u end up with more dogfish[xx(], no tks

 

[Rum Buddies]

oh hey dont' get me wrong I've been fishing a long time and seen plenty of scents and gimmicks come and go - I also like to experiment a lot.

I quite often inject anchovy oil or a similar scent into the butt hole of my anchovy in hopes that it'll slowly leak out and leave a bit of a trail. Doesn't improve on anything much? meh I've had good days with it and I've had days where it didn't seem to make much difference.

Thats the problem, there are way too many variables to ever say for sure that one particular thing made the difference. Cause and effect is a very tricky thing to actually prove.

I do think rubbing a little bit of a scent product on your hands before handling your gear helps mask any offensive smells, but thats more of a mask then an attractant.

quote:I don't know of a lot of critters that leave a trail of something that says "eat me".

you don't think a bait ball under attack by birds and fish, gives off a smell?


Does anybody use a scent product that they swear by?

 

[Rum Buddies]

quote:To become a member of the tyee club I believe you go out in a rowboat with a rod and a spoon

Ha good look with all that, they make those requirments to make it hard to enter the club, not because it works so well. Pretty much impossible I'd say with the current state of the east island chinook fishery.

 

[Degree of Freedom]

I tried squid scent on a hootchie a couple times this year, didn't catch a damn thing. If you want your gear to smell like the real thing, use the real thing...ie. herring or anchovie IMHO
In 4 trips to Alberni this year, a tin smelling cop car out fished everything.

 

[Rum Buddies]

quote:I tried squid scent on a hootchie a couple times this year, didn't catch a damn thing.

Well on a side note, I think thats a mistake many people make when using hoochies. I think more often then not the fish sees them as a bait fish of some sort and rarely as an actual squid.

I mean how many times have actually caught a fish on a hoochy and found a belly full of squid, it happens but pretty rare in my experience.

 

[Last Chance]

quote:

you don't think a bait ball under attack by birds and fish, gives off a smell?

They probably have a bit of blood in the water, but I would think that the carnage caused in a ball up and the big cloud of descending scales has more impact on fish attraction then the scent would. And since a ball under attack is rather stationary, I don't know how far the scent would drift.

 

[Rum Buddies]

well i'm not sure its worth much debate on either of our parts as we probably agree that presentation, depth and location are the major factors and scent is probably a minor part of the equation.

My point is fish have a very strong sense of smell and if they didn't use it, they would have lost it through evolution much like humans have compared to other animals. I'm sure a herring in perfect condition still leaves some sort of "scent signature" in the water it travels through.

 

[Brisco]

Poppa Swiss,
I believe when it comes to scent its best not to have any other than the natural bait you are using.On a side note, I was watching a fishing show and the guide took a red magic marker and used it on the head of the anchovie.He also put a stripe down the side.I suppose the salmon believe its injured.Have you heard of this trick?

 

[Rum Buddies]

ya I've heard of that, I've used red nail polish on anchovy heads before with the theory that bait fish flair their gills when injured or scared. They could also just see it as a bit of blood, who knows how the fish percieves it.

Same reason why hoochies have a small red stripe behind the painted eye.

What I do now is cut one gill plate off with a pair of scissors to have some gills exposed - who knows if it makes a difference, certainly hasn't hurt. I also sometimes cut the tail in the middle just a bit to give the tail a little more animation.

 

[Fishinnut]

I am good friends with Tom Nelson and John Keizer from Salmon University, the inventor of these. These salmon scenters first started out as small PVC pipe with hairline slices is them to disperse the scent. You could unscrew the ends and reload them with tiny pellets. The pellets and hairline cuts cost too much so they started making the sacks. Do they work. I think they probably do. They gave me some when they first came out and now that you mentioned it. I think they are still in the back of the seat of the boat. They probably have mold growing on them by now.

These pellets are herring pellets that are from the ground up formula that they use in the hatcheries to feed the fish. I think they are trying to trigger that feeding instinct from the hatchery and also put out the scent in the water of herring.

I do believe in scent and also know that people should not assume that their scent lasts forever. I use jellies and oils. I talked to the Procure guys out of Oregon that make the oils. One year they told me to put my scents in the refrigerator when not using them. Another time they told me to drop the oil bottles in boiling water and shake them up after as they separate.

Through different things I found out:

1. Oils and scents break down and even go bad.
2. I buy scents and oils from stores that move it fast and not ones that have had it on the shelf for years.
3. I open and smell the scent to make sure its fresh right in the store. Compare this to an old bottle. You will be surprised. I learned this from noticing stained clear bottles on shelves. They had to be old to do it that bad.
4. The refrigerator is the wrong place to put it as the oil gets cold or freezes it breaks down. If left in the boat over the winter unheated-throw it.

I learned from our PSA fishing club outing we put on. We have an outing every year at Lapush, Washington. We have a huge fish and chips dinner for our club. About 60 people show. It’s a blast. We take two crab cookers and cook battered fish in one and French-fries in the other. I had a 5-gallon bottle of oil left over and took it home. I left it outside through a cold spell where the oil got really old. It actually turned a whitish color. I cooked it and it stunk. The battered fish were not good when I used part of this oil. I checked this new found info against my smelly jellies. When the fishing oils and jellies got cold they had a smell that resembled this old cooking oil. Fish can smell a couple of parts per million. Way more sensitive that even a dog, by far. I avidly use oils and jellies and my hook up increased by quite a bit as I have a high L serene scent that I put out. This is caused from eating lots of meat. Mammals put out this scent, such as seals, killer whales and everything that eats salmon. The scent mask this odor. I also am a huge user of WD 40 and think it is as good as anything out there. I wipe all of my flashers, spoons, and lures down with WD 40 at the end of the day. I think they work great but you have to take care of your oils.

 

[Mongoose]

thats looks like prawn bait in a mesh bag.

i think if were to cut a fish's belly open and take out its lunch and dinner and put it in a mesh bag and throw it down by your cannon ball, i think that would work better

 

[Dancin]

I tried the "Salmon Scenter" last summer and was not impressed. The concept is to attract fish, sort of a poor man's "chum line." If the fish are there a proper presentation is going to draw strikes not a bag of desolving beads. I do feel scents are importent to help mask human oders but not as an attractent. There are too many real smells to compete with in the big blue for a handfull of beads . Just my opinion.

As far as color markers are concerned they have been around for awhile. The "Spectra Minnow Color System" offers seven different colors in pens to mark both live and dead bait. Never tried them myself.