Understanding Bass Sense of Smell – It’s about the Allure

Understanding Bass' Sense of Smell

Sense of smell, also known as olfaction, serves as a secondary sense which alerts bass to forage over long distances with limited directional information. For instance, some suggest bass’ sense of smell can help them identify schools of bait fish before they can see them. Plus, bass will use their sense of smell just before potentially capturing the forage to test the odor to ensure its consistency with known forage. If the scent doesn’t match, the bass may swim away.. Bass have two sets of small nostrils on either side of their head where water flows in through the front set and exits the rear set enabling them to identify scent. Scent is also used for mating, to detect poor water(pollutants) and potentially to identify threats.

Why is Understanding Bass' Sense of Smell Important?'

It is important to understand bass’ sense of smell to:

Fish Slow: To ensure the lure’s scent doesn’t have an odors that deter a strike.
- Lure Selection: Select a lure that has odor that attracts a strike.

Understanding Bass' Sense of Smell

Clean Lure: Some believe washing a lure to remove smell of past catches or other substances such as gas, oil, nicotine, sun screen, soap or deet. A bass sense of smell is much stronger than a human and research indicates they can smell 1/200 of a drop of a substance in 100 gallons of water. Bass smell is 1000 times better than a dog.
Nares: Fish smell through nares.
Distance: Depends on water conditions for example current, the specific scent, and surrounding environment, generally bass can detect scent from long distances.
Quantity: Bass can detect very little scent and as scent dissipates slowly in water for a greater length of time as compared to air.
Scent Trails: As the source of scent moves through water it leaves a scent trail to which some believe help bass identify forage.
Identification: Some suggest bass can smell pheromones, sugar, salt, alcohol, amino acids, and bitter substances.
Navigation: Studies show that bass use a sense of smell to navigate for example back to spawning bed.
Compelling a Bite: Some suggest an excellent scent will compel an instinctive bite similar to a reaction bite when a lure moves quickly past a bass..
Odorless Lures: Some suggest that Odorless (or tasteless) lure will quickly be spit out as the bass can detect it is not forage.

Additional Considerations

Attractants: For scent, attractants must be water soluble, as oil-based attractants do not provide scent as they are not water soluble.