Here’s one of the very fundemental fishing basics. Fish, as a rule, don’t like the way we humans smell. We exude a chemical called L-serine. It’s a non essential amino acid and fish hate the way it smells. Some of us exude very little of it and some of us exude a lot of it.
This is another of the little goodies I learned reading In-Fisherman a long time back. They even tested it in a pool and when a drop was put in at one end most of the fish immediately moved away from that end of the pool. For a while there was even a place you could send in a test strip and they would tell you if you had a lot or a little.
If you fish out of a boat you probably have some gas, oil or grease on your hands, if you fish from shore and you filled your car up you probably have some gas smell on your hands. Guess what, fish don’t like the smell of that either. It’s one of the fishing basics.
Catching plenty of fish isn’t to hard when you are using a spray on scent for the species of fish you are trying to catch. I’ve done it frequently with Dr. Juice Northern.
First we’ll describe the walleye tests and then the northern tests. These tests were done with one of my fishing buddies, ny wife who was a total novice and my dad. My dad and I were considered the local experts on some of the southwest Minnesota lakes and people would actually send strangers to our house and they would ask us where the fish were biting and on what. A couple of the bait shops in the area would even call us to let us know when the fish turned on and were biting good.
Being better at catching fish than my wife or my buddy I would usually be the one using the scents first. After that they would try the scents and I would be scentless. Lol, my dad was an unwitting victim in the walleye and northern tests.
