Of Dollars and Scents

Hi Fisho's... what's new in your world today??? If your anything like me, your sitting in front of your computer, bored shitless with work, and dreaming of screaming reels, hard pulling fish and monumental bust-ups... I only wish!

Today i wanna touch on a few grey areas in fishin. The topic is not a new one but still warrents some healthy debate. Is the use of scents cheating??? Is putting on an additive to lure considered ethical to notion of pure lure fishing??? Also is using scents built into lures or lures made from biodegradable material or food stuffs considered a 'real' lure????

All these questions are subject to personal opinion. 1 fisho might advocate the use of Berkley Gulps, for instance, while another might scoff at the idea of using a lure made of eadible food. One things for sure, if you don't use these lures in bream comps these days you are seriously doing yourself a major dis-service. They work particularly well on all species, even though they look like absolute shit out of the packet. And this where my point of contention lies. They look like shit, swim extremely poorly, have terrible colours....but catch a heap of fish. The Gulp formula is meant to attract fish and the fact that the lure is made of food stuffs, similar to food fed to fish in aquaculture, means the only thing attracting the fish to take the lure is its bait-like qualities. The deception is not in the anglers ability to trick the fish into believing the lure lie but rather triggering another response in fish...smell not sight.

What about lures made of plastisol??? If you apply scent to these lures do they work as well??? Is this considered cheating??? Once again in tournaments, the testing ground for a lot of our retail products,allow the use of scents in comps. In the infancy of comps the scents were quite poor and yeilded next to no benefit, maybe only angler confidence, thats about it. The scents were spray based and made of smells of garlic, prawns, aniseed etc etc.

Then came along Ultrbite a new kind of additive. This was a pheromone based scent undetectible to humans. It apparently stimulated the fish to feed. One of the main issues was when you apply the scent to the outside of plastic lures, re-application was needed quite regularly, same with the older style of scents. Some people swore by the pheromone others, like me, didnt see any increased fish catches by using it.

Now, we come to the goodies. Recently Squidgies released thier pro-range of lures. Inside each packet comes a scent t apply to the lures bought called S-Factor. Without doubt this is the best scent to date. I have noticed a drastic increase in certain fish catches and re-application is not as often due to the gooy texture of the stuff. I have noticed a big increase in jewie catches but not needed for flatties. Just depends on how the fish attack.

Apparently the main difference with S-Factor compared to other scents is that S-Factor is water soluble and fish can taste the lure from a range of 1 meter or so. The comp fishos are going crazy over the stuff and it seems every secong angler is using the stuff. Well done to squidgy for fighting back against Gulps.

While i reckon the purity of lure fishing is being lost somewhat in plastix fishing, theres no denying they are being created more deadly every season. As i said its personal preference whether you think its cheating or not, but one things for sure if you fish comps you cant do without em.