Using scent when ice fishing?

Last week I asked if people used scent when fishing. This week, I’m hoping to get a bit more specific. Does anyone use scent when ice fishing? I often hear about using scent for open water fishing, but it is a topic that really isn’t discussed much around the ice fishing community. I’ve experienced success using a garlic scent jigging waxies for perch and pan fish. I first starting using it because I noticed an oil film on the hole from the gas auger, and no matter how much I tried to clean the hole, you could still see the oil slick. I’m a huge believer that something like oil from an engine is repulsive to fish. So I put on some scent and haven’t turned back. I also believe the scent lasts a super long time because the water is cold and the scent won’t come off in the cold water nearly as fast as it does in warm water.

What do others think?

Classic Fishing Products (known as Culprit) in their saltwater Riptide series had a shrimp spray. Good Stuff!

Earlier this September I was fishing a lake my buddy lives on and it was one of the best crappie bites I’ve ever been on, and I believe it was all due to the Gulp Alive scent for their plastics. We were using one inch Gulp Alive minnows in chartreuse and the natural minnow color on a 1/32 oz jig, pick a color in the rainbow and it worked. We also experimented with trigger x on the same jigs and the bite noticeably slowed. One variable for the change in the aggression of the fish could have been the profile of the plastic and not the scent, we used the nymph, spike tail, and the paddle tail, and none of them seemed to produce as well. So, the next day we went out with some little white twister tails that we marinated in the Gulp Alive and they were nailing that as well. Again, this leads me to believe that scent can be a big advantage. Even against live bate, also using crawlers and wax worms, the Gulp outfished everything. All in all I think scent will rarely have a negative impact, and I still love the trigger x panfish plastics, I’ve also had one of the best late ice crappie bites only using trigger x plastics. My point is that there may be times for different scents and it never hurts to try a few different options out.

P.S.- One last thing, we used the Power Bait Crappie Nibbles as well, and for some reason the size class of fish with out a doubt increased. My buddy used those and I stayed fishing with 1 inch minnows and out every 10 crappies he caught, 9 of them would be much better fish than what I was catching. We weren’t keeping fish, and literally caught a couple hundred in a day, but the downside to those nibbles is that you constantly have to re-bait them like live bait, while I just dropped my plastic minnow back down to reel in another one. Might sound like a tall tail, and no these fish were not large fish, I’d say 9 inches was our average but, it’s a lake with a large population of stunted fish, and we still had a blast doing it. Good luck with trying scents and scented baits, let us know what works well for you.

Scents when ice fishing? Yes! It’s not magic, but I believe that it produces extra bites, and fish hold the bait longer.

Cold water is when fish attractant / scent really excel in my opinion.

There are lots of good products, but the lineup of flavors from Kick’n Bass Products are really great. Kick’n Crappie, Kick’n Walleye, Kick’n Trout.

It’s fish oil and not petroleum based, it’s very strong, and it lasts a long time on the bait. The trick is to apply to a dry (not wet) bait. You can even apply it to live bait.

Cold water, as in under the ice, is when fish are notorious for studying a baits. They’ll park an inch away and simply stare at it. When they get in this mode I think a scent can help them make up their mind to hit because the bait stays in a spot longer and can permeate that immediate area with scent. Like all fishing there are days when scent isn’t going to be a factor pro or con.

I use Berkley power bait nibbles and power bait wigglers for added scent. Both baits work quite well in the soft and hard water seasons.