Taste is a contact sense where the bass uses taste buds to contact and test potential forage to decide whether to consume it or spits it out.
Why is Understanding Bass Taste Important?
It is is important to understand bass taste to:
Select Lure Type: As bass when biting a dead, hiding or slow moving wounded forage use vacuum bite (bite types) to pull the forage into their mouth and if they sense something wrong (including taste) they will spit it out. As such, a flavored lure may result in a bass keeping the lure or at least take longer to spit the lure out.
To Better Time Hook Sets: As flavored lures may stay in the bass’ mouth longer allowing for better hook sets. It can take a split second for a bass to reject a lure; quicker than an angler can make a hook set. Some suggest the vacuum bite is so subtle that many anglers would not identify fish on making it more important the bass holds onto the lure.
Understanding Bass Taste
Taste Buds: Bass have thousands of taste buds on their tongue, sides of the inner mouth, their gills and throat.
Tasteless Lures: Some suggest that tasteless (or odorless) lure will quickly be spit out as the bass can detect it is not forage.
Additional Considerations
Clean Lure: Some believe washing a lure to remove objects of foreign taste including past catches of other species or other substances such as gas, oil, nicotine, sun screen, soap or deet. A bass taste sense 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.
Flavored Lure: Common flavors added to lures.
Anise-Based Oils: Licorice-like flavor (and smell) made from ansie plant.
Garlic:
Salt:
Shad/Minnow:
Crayfish/Crab
Attractants: [Figure 1] A substance or produced add to a lure to enhance the appeal to the bass such as flavor(could also include scent and/or visibility)
