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Fly Tying
josephcsylvia

Scenting flies???

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Great reply! ^^^^

 

I like the Gulp products too, and have caught many fish on them. However, and this may relate some to flies. I seem to have the most success with those Gulp imitations that are meant to be fished as "bait" and more so for fish species that feed heavily by "scent". This is bottom feeding species like catfish, Croakers, Spot, etc.

 

For the various Gulp imitations such as the " soft jerk bait" types, that are meant to be fished just as a regular soft jerk bait is fished, I cannot say I've seen an improvement in catch rate because of the added scent with the Gulp. Frankly, a Zoom Fluke IMO usually outfishes the Gulp version for me, and I believe it's because the Zoom Fluke has better action.

 

So, again only my opinion, if you choose a fly pattern that has good movement, and an appropriate size for the flounders, and get it near them so they can react to it, I doubt an added "scent" will improve the fly. Actually, the oil or juice with these scents might deter the motion & action of some materials. I've found this to be true with marabou & "Chum Flies" tied with it that are fished in a chum line. The marabou "works" better without adding a scent.

 

I've known guys who "sweetened" bucktail jigs with pieces of real bait, like shrimp or bloodworms, etc. and that can work sometimes, but for me most times I never saw the need.

 

The last flounder I recall catching was caught at Pawley's Island, SC on cut bait that was on a 1/2 oz bottom bouncer rig with a spinner & bead hook arrangement. Spinners can improve a bait, as they attract the fishes attention to the bait with both flash & vibration, but doesn't mean you would get the same thing with a fly.

 

On second thought, you might give one of Henry Cowen's "Coyote" Streamers a try for Flounder! wink.png

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There is the belief that it's not so much that scent is an attractant, but that it masks any human generated scents.

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I use scent on plastic worms and creature baits when bass fishing with bait casting and spinning gear but i don't believe it attracts the bass.I have noticed the bass will hold the lure longer before it spits it out increasing my hookset time..Sometimes they will just take it and run with it without letting go.Without scent they usually spit it out quick.These lures are usually on the bottom.

 

I have never fished for flounder but if it is like bass fishing then the scents may work in the same way.

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We do use quite a bit of scent on lures when using spin or plug casting gear.... Everything that swims in the 'Glades will hit a jig head with a Gulp tail -but we never use a bit of scent when we're fly fishing...

 

That said, live chumming is nearly the same thing as using scent on your fly. When we're live chumming I grab a handful of pilchards or sardines and just toss them out along a shoreline or near structure of some kind - and we don't even pick up a rod until the party starts! That first handful are followed by a half handful of crippled livies, then every 30 seconds or so I keep tossing just a few cripples at a time until we see the first pop or flash (and you have to keep it up all the time you're at the spot...) -but we don't fish even then. I want to see where the baits are holding after we've tossed them - along shorelines your first bait that gets hit might be 200 feet from where you started but slowly that will change. Our flies simply mimic the size and coloration of the live chum (usually white/silver and in the 3 to 5" size range). Once the party starts almost every cast will draw a strike... My best snook on fly (est. at 23lbs was taken this way on a 10wt rod) but every specie nearby will come to join the party so you never know just what will strike a fly when you're live chumming. I restrict my chumming to inshore along wild Gulf shorelines (and it's only this time of year that I can net enough bait to make it worthwhile) but it's deadly effective in every location from bluewater (that's how giant blackfin tuna are teased up on the Hump out of Islamorada...) to inshore wrecks and navigation markers...

 

An absolute beginner with a fly rod can get in on the action once you have a livewell full of white baits and learn how to turn the fish on with them...

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I have never used scent on flies YET. I will flat guarantee and bet my paycheck (safe since I'm retired) that there are TIMES when scents will make a huge. When I was fishing a lot of rivers and lakes up north for smallmouth, largemouth, walleyes, catfish, etc. we would generally start out without scent on our jigs though the powerbaits we used a lot of had built in scent like many baits today do. If we were fishing areas we knew held fish but only getting weak taps and barely hooked fish often lost by boat we would go to scents. There were many times over the years that this would turn things around and takes were solid and hooks deeper in the mouth. Sometimes fish were active and scents made no difference. Sometimes they were truly shut down and scent might not help a bit. But on days scent worked you could break off, go back without a scented bait and get shut down until you went back to the scent.

 

The application I see for trout is stillwater. In fast water I think fish have only a short time to decide if they're going to take a bait or not. It is possible they might hang on a bit longer if it's scented but if you're hooking them okay I don't know how you'd prove that. I do know years ago I started fishing steelhead in the northern Great Lakes tribs with spawn bags with yarn. After a year or two of that we found if the spawn bag got torn off you could go right back with the yarn and often catch the fish. This led to experimenting with yarn only, then mostly with yarn and scented rubber eggs. In fast water yarn or yarn and egg caught us many many steelhead but when the fish were off the river mouth you could throw out yarn and let it soak it bottom until the hook rusted off. In stillwater off the river mouths it was still a spawn bag or spoon/spinner bite.

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Vic

Makes "scents" to me. I would have no problems scenting flies. If pouring powerbait on the fly helped me I'd do it. I'm much better with a bait casting or spinning rod so a fly rod is disadvantage enough for me.

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I know guys that drift a salt impregnated plastic worm under an indicator for smallmouth and they out-fish my streamers 3:1.

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