Marty, a question just occurred to me: Were those spinnerbait skirts made of
rubber, or were they they made of silicone as are those used today? I know
that rubber will absorb scents, but offhand I don't believe that silicone
does.

--
Bob Rickard
(AKA Dr. Spinnerbait)
www.secretweaponlures.com
--------------------------=x O')))




"Marty" wrote in message
...

"Bob Rickard" wrote in message
om...
Marty, a severe attack of intense curiosity compels me to ask why you
use
scents only on spinnerbaits? My opinions on that have always been rather
neutral & ambivilent, so if you know something here I'd love to hear it.

Bob, about 15 years ago, my catches on SBs started dropping relative to my
partner's, to the point where he'd outfish me 6-1 or thereabouts. We used
to
have pretty equal results. We spent countless hours discussing my problem,
and nothing made sense with regard to retrieve speed, cadence, depth, or
whatever. Odor kept occurring to me as the only plausible reason.

One day I picked up a sample bottle of Baitmate crawfish for 87¢ and put
it
on an SB the night before an outing. I immediately started catching fish
and
beat my partner for the first time in years. I then applied the stuff to
just about every lure I owned. I either beat him or held my own every time
for the next six weeks, which was unprecedented. Then a day came when I
caught no bass (pickerel only) and was convinced that the scent was
repelling the bass, for reasons I won't go into right now. I have told
this
story here before and was challenged by Warren on my assumption, but
that's
neither here nor there.

When I got home I washed the scent off all of my lures. The next day I
checked them out and all seemed free of the scent, except the spinnerbaits
still smelled of crawfish. Then I realized why SBs were my biggest
problem--skirt material retains scent, as it is absorbed. Today I have
full
confidence fishing without scent, except for SBs. Maybe it wouldn't make a
difference now, but my head got so screwed up that I have to use it to
have
any confidence.

So that's the bottom line--you can wash scent off just about any lure
except
those with skirts.