If you want to quote reports, they say that as much as 80 per cent of the bass fishing in warm waters is done with the help of scented attractants. Correct figures or not, it clearly shows that bass is one of the fish which is most commonly attracted to scents. Trout, snook, and stripper do not get mentioned in connection with scent fishing anywhere. Yes, some sporadic cases you will find it stated that this tactic is used with salmon as well. However, the best results are undoubtedly with the bass fishing.

Myth versus fact

Bass fishing with scent attractants has been thrown up so many times that it has almost become a myth. However it is not actually as effective as you would be led to believe. Indeed it does make a difference to the number of strikes you will get but then so will bettering your angling skills, your style of fishing, your bait type, and the list goes on. In other words, even though it has been proved that it does attract the bass, it is not really the ultimate weapon in the fisherman's arsenal; rather one among the multitude of skills he needs to use for bass fishing.

The controversy of whether it is or it isn't

Many anglers would vouch for the fact that bass fishing is definitely easier and more successful after the scents were added to bait while others refute such statements by saying that it really does not make that much of a difference, though they agree that it is visible that the bass react better to the bait with scent than to the bait which does not have scent. However, this does not in any way imply a magical bass fishing tool for the angler.

Other angles of thought

Let us leave aside for some time the question of whether bass fishing is really responsive to scents. Facts say that bass are put off by tobacco smell, detergent smell, bug (mosquito) repellant smell and even sun-block lotion. Now logically speaking, if the bass did not any power for smell, would this be possible? Then, one can logically deduct that the bass do have olfactory senses and that it can use it for defense. If they can do that, why can't bass use the same sense of smell to track food?

Many fishermen will tell you that the best way for bass fishing is to use motion; however we have an almost equal group of them advocating the use of scent as one of the best ways to catch bass.