Kokanee and scents

[KilKenny]

I have reduced my scent arsenal to just shoepeg corn soaked in pro-cure hot pink anise oil. It works for me and outperforms other things I’ve tried. I think the sent thing is a combination of curiosity and masking the human scent. I would think krill would be an obvious choice also.

My take on why kokanee strike:
kokanee are Sockeye salmon and Sockeye salmon are omnivores. In addition to plankton they also eat krill and small fish in there ocean going phase. So I don’t think it’s too far fetched for their land locked brothers to have a strike instinct.

I would say kokanee’s attraction to lures is very similar to the way a cat cannot resist a rolling ball of yarn even though cats don’t eat yarn.

I’ve watched videos of kokanee hitting lures and they don’t seem like they are being aggressive, they often follow the lures for quite a while leaving then returning several times before they bite. It’s like they just can’t leave it alone.

[Downrigger]

Interesting thoughts KilKenny.

Why do you think masking human scent is necessary? Kokanee surely can't know what humans smell like, or associate them with danger, unless they've already been caught once.

I agree that they strike out of reaction. I think your analogy to cats and yarn is excellent.

I think curiosity is probably the best explanation for why scents may increase catch rate. It may pull them in to investigate and they stay for the hoochie.

It just seems odd though that a cat would be more inclined to play with a ball of yarn that smelled like garlic, or corn, or whatever.

[platypus]

Interesting thoughts KilKenny.

Why do you think masking human scent is necessary? Kokanee surely can't know what humans smell like, or associate them with danger, unless they've already been caught once.

I agree that they strike out of reaction. I think your analogy to cats and yarn is excellent.

I think curiosity is probably the best explanation for why scents may increase catch rate. It may pull them in to investigate and they stay for the hoochie.

It just seems odd though that a cat would be more inclined to play with a ball of yarn that smelled like garlic, or corn, or whatever.

--One toy with catnip one without. When you want to play but the cat doesn't.. just drag the toy with catnip by and you'll find out what scent can do.
--Human scent: some believe all predators have a trigger scent that prey can detect.
--Not all human scent is bad; whenever my grandmother was on the boat.. we had her bait the hooks or even tie on and handle plugs and spoons... not because we were lazy, but over the years she and the lures she handled consistently outfished everyone on the boat. It may have been superstition, but it worked... and those were the days when many conscidered a woman on board was bad luck.. maybe bad luck for them.

[Downrigger]

[QUOTE=platypus;31347]--One toy with catnip one without. When you want to play but the cat doesn't.. just drag the toy with catnip by and you'll find out what scent can do. [/quote

Ah, yes, but cats eat catnip. Kokanee only eat plankton, which is not a scent that is even available as far as I know. What would happen if you had a yarn toy that smelled like rubber or apples or something that cats wouldn't necessarily associate with food?

--Human scent: some believe all predators have a trigger scent that prey can detect.
--Not all human scent is bad; whenever my grandmother was on the boat.. we had her bait the hooks or even tie on and handle plugs and spoons... not because we were lazy, but over the years she and the lures she handled consistently outfished everyone on the boat. It may have been superstition, but it worked... and those were the days when many conscidered a woman on board was bad luck.. maybe bad luck for them.

That's interesting. I could see how prey would learn to identify a smell of a predator over time. Do Kokanee know that humans are predators though? Given the number of them that are stocked by humans, and the level of human interaction that must involve, they must at least be familiar with the scent. Does it scare them though? I don't know.

[platypus]

--OK I'll admit it: Anise makes my boat smell better.. nothing really to do with catching fish.

--Given that hatchery fish for the most part have a good experience with humans feeding them, one would think human scent would attract them to your lure... except those that we steralized... they might have a different oppinion of human scent.

[KilKenny]

Part of the reason I like to fish for kokanee is this very discussion. You really have to work to figure them out and separating fact from fiction is part of the fun.

As for human scent being a factor, I have know idea for sure, but I seem to do better when I stick to a program. I wash my hands and lures with bio- degradable soap. (If you handle your boat motor or pump your gas primer you may get the smell of gasoline on you hands and that is a sure fish repellant). I use anise oil which seems to work either as an attractant or as a odor mask.

It occurred to me that we say human scent when maybe its more accurate to say mammal scent. maybe as far as fish are concerned, if you've smelled one mammal you've smelled them all. There are lots of predatory mammals in and out of the oceans that may have made a genetic memory imprint on our silver little friends.

I know there are lots of species of fish but too me they all smell the same lol, maybe its the same for kokanee.

One last thought, I also wash my lures between catches to eliminate the possible smell of blood left on the lure from the last fish. I grew up in Oregon and when we caught kings (Chinook) if someone bled out a fish in the river upstream people fishing downstream would get mad because they said the smell of blood would kill the bite.

Cheers

[Ed J]

I wash my hands and lures with bio- degradable soap.


Cheers

At the same time I have heard about rubbing the slime from a fresh caught fish on your dogger works wonders also it seemed to help me some.

just realized I have just resurrected a long forgotten thread.

[mtncat1]

thanks for resurrecting this thread it was a good read . my friend swears by rubbing kokanee belly meat on his lake trout lures.

[TroutScout]

About 20 years ago I read the comprehensive research done by a company that made a fish-soap called Rinserine and a Scent called Masking. I think they were based out of Washington state. They researched scent efffects on salmon. They also packed their lure overnight in Kelp to cover undersirable scents. Some of the points I remember are that they dipped their lures in bilge water, gas & oil residue and it had no effect on the bite. They discovered that there was a common scent that stopped salmon from biting. It was present in all of salmon's natural mammal preditors, killer whale, bears, man etc. They identified it as an amino acid called L-serine. They developed their soap to specifically remove L-serine from hands. I don't think their products are available anymore. Another recommendation they had was to run your lures through the dishwasher to remove scents if you stopped getting bites.

[SuperDaveMT]

I saw a video years ago by a Canadian company showing the bilge water/gas/oil experiment and the lures dipped in the bilges seemed to catch salmon at the same rate as the "clean" lures. According to the scientists, L-serine (an amino acid) is common to mammalian predators and can be a turn off to fish. As I recall, men have more of it on their skin than women, and blondes more than other hair colors. There are a variety of soaps available that are supposed to remove it - Berkley Erase and Dr. Juice Hand Cleaner are a couple I have used. Another option is to wear surgical gloves while you fish to minimize skin contact with the bait and lures. The soaps are pretty good at getting rid of fish stink after fillet duties, so I usually go that route.

[TroutScout]

Here's the Youtube of the Dr Juice L-Serine test:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbOBaRiCLw