Sally Hansen's Hard as Nails Issue

[mikechell 0]

I think if folk want to bait fish go for it. But if you clip on a lure, or tie on a fly and then coat it in fish guts or hook on a trailer worm etc, you're kinda cheating yourself.

I've had this argument on another forum, Piker ... tipping jigs or flies with live bait. I think you are just bait fishing at that point. I almost got banned from that sight because of my attitude.

[dontheo 0]

If I tie something to fish that week I don't use head cement. If it is going to be a week or more I let them dry out on a piece of foam

[dazzyd 0]

Hmmm, I must be in touch with my feminine side, cos I don't mind the smell and use SH for all my streamer & wet fly heads.

 

If you want shot of the box, you can always pass it to me

 

Darrell

[shoebop 0]

I dip all my flies in English Leather! Don't use Hi Karate though, the fish don't like it...same with any women's colognes.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm going to hell

[dazzyd 0]

I'm going to hell

 

HAHAHA:). Se you there;)

[blackdog1101 0]

Set the fly box outdoors in the sun. Might take a day or two but the smell will go away.

[cruzfly89 0]

I heard this same question today on the orivs podcast. Tom said not to use on flies for fish with a good sense of smell. Im not so sure i would agree with it, I use sally hansens almost on every nymph, i have caught lots of fish, but maybe I could be catching more because Tom sure has a heck of alot more knowledge about the sport than i will probably ever have. I think there needs to be a study done....

[dontheo 0]

I sure do like the smell of Sally's.

[utyer 0]

After watching Uncle Ken's last video, I think I will start keeping all my flies in a jar of Jiff..

[Stippled Popper 0]

Use Loon products. No toxic vapors and much more comfortable to use as you don't need to wear a gasmask. Dries quickly.

 

I've been using Loon Hard Head on some of my smaller and more flexible popper heads. Two weeks ago at

a conclave I had a gentleman I'd sold a few tell me that with that kind of coating that the Hard Head melted

after he left the flies in a box in his closed vehicle during the summer.

 

Has anyone this happen with either SH or 30 minute epoxy?

[SilverCreek 0]

Your sense of smell is different than a fish's sense of smell. We "smell" in air. That means the smell of Sally Hansen's is a volatile chemical, lacquer thinner.

 

Fish "smell" in water. That means the chemical must also be able to be dissolved in water. Acetone is the major ingredient in lacquer thinners and it does mix with water. So any residual acetone will come off of the fly.

 

However, it is more complicated than that. For a fish to detect where the "smell" is coming from, there must be some directionality to the smell. A nymph in moving water is different from attracting sharks by putting blood in the ocean.

 

For the "smell" of fly to be carried downstream to the fish before the fly, the water must be moving to the fish, faster than the fly is moving to the fish. If the fly is moving toward the fish faster than the water, the fish has no warning. It is then like a sonic boom. When we hear as sonic boom, the airplane has already passed by us.

 

When you fish with a strike indicator, the indicator moves downstream faster than the fly. The indicator is dragging the fly downstream because the water on the surface is traveling faster than the water at the level of the nymph. In that case, the fish cannot smell the nymph before the fish has already taken the nymph.

 

Our goal is a drag free drift which means the fly moves at the same speed as the water. If that is so, then how can the fish "smell" the nymph before the nymph reaches the fish?

[SCOwens 0]

I know it is expensive but I can't imagine using anything besides Clear Cure Hydro now to seal off my flies. I know there are other products out there that probably achieve the same thing. Hydro is just the only one I have used

[Piker20 0]

Regards the loon, it is a water base product so I would have thought sun would only harden it further as it dried any remaining water from the product? I use a fair bit of extra water in my hardhead bottle and apply it very thin. It soaks into wraps very easily this way and still locks everything down. Haven't found the car heater or my fireguard an issue. That's where I dry flies after washing them following salty dips.

[JSzymczyk 0]

bottom line- I use it and seem to catch as many fish on flies with it as without it. I tie many streamers and bucktails for bass and panfish which are supposedly more scent-sensitive than trout. I always use it on the heads of my bucktails. I use it to coat the EVIL lead wire wraps I use on buggers and similar flies. I use them in still water too, not just flowing water.

 

We don't KNOW for sure everything about any fish's opinion of what smells bad enough to turn away. We know generalizations. Just in this post, we've seen that some individual people are repulsed by SH, some don't care, and some like it. Perhaps it is similar for individual fish ?? Just the same as we don't KNOW for sure how fish interpret their world with sight (see the "wings on dry flies" thread).

 

I have known several trout spinfishermen who sprayed their lures with WD-40 as an attractant and they did as well as anyone. Others say ANY type of lube/solvent/chemical will instantly make a lure less than worthless.

 

Nobody knows for sure.

[hatesanger 0]

I had the same worry when I was using it..... when I tie up a batch of anything that is coated in clear, I put them in a little cup of pine shavings for a couple days and it seems to dissipate the smell considerably...... just my thoughts.....