With the upcoming opener for Blackmouth coming soon, what scents or combination of scents do you use with your baits? Do you put the scent on all your gear or just on the bait or lure? What is your favorite blackmouth setup? Thank you for your help.

My favorite and most productive set up is using whole herring (about green label size, fresh is best)in a Minnow Teaser Hood 30 - 36 inches behind a green Hot spot flasher. Then just go find the bait at your favorite blackmouth fishing hole. If the Hering is fresh you don't need scent, if not so fresh use a little dab of Mike's herring scent.

Hope this years Blackmouth fishing is as good as last year!

Good luck and tight lines!!

just remember, you heard it here first on piscatorial.
take the skin off of a dogfish,( no pun intended andy) and soak it in skunk cabbage juice for 24 hrs. then soak your herring in this mess for 30 minutes. the blackmouth go nuts over this. ( as told to me by a 90 year old skok indian. old tribal secret)

After Bardo's reply I'd put up a graemlin that had had a really sour look on it but the only one on the board just looks pissed. No Offense Bardo but there is NO WAY I'm gonna handle a stinkin' dogfish, let alone soak it in skunk cabbage just to catch a blackie. Now what I use that works well for me is filet your frozen herring and soak them overnight in pure anise extract and a good shot of WD-40. These are for adding to your hooch's. For spoons I am gonna use herring salt or shrimp smelly jelly mixed 2 to 1 with fresh crushed garlic (heard this one from Tom Nelson in a seminar at the Sportsman Show). As for set ups, the hot one for me last year was a 3.5 inch green/glow Coyote spoon 40" behind a green/glow Hot Spot. Finally found an army truck colored Coyote that I think will work well also.
Good luck and tight lines, Jeff

what can i say? it worked for chief seattle anyway. i dont think they minded the smell.

I use a white/glow hoochie no more than 22" behind a green/glow Hot Spot charged up with a camera flash bulb. I also add a little Mikes Herring Oil (extra strength) on to the Hot Spot just for kicks. If the hoochie is not working than I work a 4.0 green/silver or blue/silver Coyote spoon behind the Hot Spot at 22"

I use a downrigger for blackmouth, with a 12 pound ball to keep things nice and straight down. I do best on big runouts, and look for bait in places I know - that's where the fish are. Got sidescan sonar as well as regular, and I can really keep on top of them with that rig. For gear I use Power Pro mainline - real small diameter makes the light bite easier to spot, on a big flyrod with a single action Pflueger Medalist - makes even landing the shakers fun and a 20 pounder - look out! I hook my line release up to my booger ball with a 3 foot piece of nylon cord - this also enhances the look of a bite and if you screw up and get blown in a bit while hugging the bottom your booger ball hits before your bait does. I use herring, plug cut tight, and sometimes a fish flash with it. I pretty much don't mess with scents, fresh or fresh frozen herring freshly plug cut stink just fine all by themselves. I'll rub my hands down with herring guts when I cut the first few, and rub some on the rest of the terminal gear to kill any human stink to start the day, but after that I don't worry about it. Man, already getting ansie - spent the day putting the downriggers on my new boat and re-rigging everything rather than going steelhead fishing:D

My wife does mind handling dogfish skin!

PRO-CURE HERRING OIL, apply every 2-3 drifts while I mooch cut plug herring

Baitboy, A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Phil Pirone (the man behind Pro-Cure) he knew some of the guides I worked with in Ak. and stopped by the resort to say hi. He brought with him gallon jugs of all the scents he produces and gave them to us, I had a chance to try all of them and do some side-by-side comparisons as well as trying them in various combinations, this is what I found, they all caught fish, some though definitely worked better (for me anyways) then others. My first choice by far is either squid or squid/anise together, injected into the bait, I firmly believe the squid put a number of fish in the boat that I may not have otherwise caught.
One other thing I noticed and this may be totally coincidental, alot of the bigger fish I caught that year(over 30lbs.)were white kings, (a biologist once told me a white kings primary diet is squid)
My second choice would be herring or herring/anise oil, didn't produce as well as the squid but it did produce better then the unscented baits, most of the time. Anise by itself also had some good days.
I also tried sardine, anchovy, and shrimp but I can't say they did any better then the unscented baits.
Last thing, the herring seemed to work better then the others for silvers, anise also worked well.
Hope this helps you a little, I hope I don't sound like a salesman cause I'm not, I'm just speaking as a guide who was paid to produce fish and this stuff worked for me. :p

Anymore I prefer to go unscented. For blackmouth I've found that it is far more important to find the bait put my lure with GREEN color down in the area of the bait(preferably candlefish)and keep it there. Knowing where the bait will be at any particular point in the tidal run has improved my catch ratio much more than the scents ever did.

If 25 years of fishing for blackmouth have taught me anything it's rule number one: find the bait and you will catch them. Blackmouth are immature Chinook and their one purpose is to eat! From my experience scents don't seem to increase your catch.

I would concur that blackmouth are eager biters, and finding bait is a BIG part of catching them, but I wouldn't necessarily say that using scent isn't important or doesn't effect success.

I think that there are 3 important attributes of your lure of choice that can effect your success. This opinion comes from 20 years of applying and learning on my own, and listening and learning from others. Some of the people I've learned tricks from include Tom Nelson, John Beath, Charlie White and others.

I think that you increase your odds of success if your lure has these 3 characteristics, 1) some kind of vibration to draw the fish in from a distance 2) an attractive action to bring them up to the bait after they see it and 3) the certificate of authenticity - scent.

If all 3 things are working properly, and if there are fish around, you will catch them. It may be that the scent of your choice is only masking the human scent, or it may be that the scent is triggering a response based on the feeding habits. Whether you use herring oil, anise, WD-40 or a special concoction, I think that using something is better than not. Like I say, if nothing else, use it to mask the human scent.

Even if I'm jigging, I'll squirt something on the jig. If I've handled my flashers they get a little something too. Hoochies get a squirt or a herring strip. I rub a little on the leader as well. I've run side by side tests and sometimes it doesn't matter, but more times than not, the lure that has the 3 things I've outlined will be a successful lure.

It's so easy to add a little something to your lure that I can't see why you wouldn't use them.

Hey Jeff, let's do some field trials with that new Coyote eh?

Damn straight Seacat,
The best tides early look to be the weekend of the 23rd/24th (2 to 3 ft tide changes). I'll come up your way and you can show me some of your neck o' the woods!!!! I'll call ya and set it up.
Good luck and tight lines, Jeff

Thank you for all this good information

Sounds like a plan Jeff!

Hey Dogfish, if you're not already booked for that weekend, why don't you come along with us. Should be fun.

Seacat,

It's a go. I have a kitchen pass in hand for that weekend, so I will show up whenever, whereever, with what ever gear you say.

I might even bring those velvet nipple squeezin's , or what ever you called that stuff you brought to the Satsop.

Andy

hey akkings, do you use metal jigs alot when your guiding cause I was wondering if you had better luck with scent on them, probly so I imagine, I know its a bait thing but it cant hurt. I'm forced to jig and mooch for blackmouth cause my downrigger situation wont let me get that deep. I'll try the squid/herring oil when it opens here pretty quickly, good info. later Ben

Rockfish, 98% of my salmon fishing since 1990 has been with clients on board and is predominantly done with herring. I started out at a resort that did alot of downrigger fishing and on occassion I would use plugs and spoons and I did put a few drops of scent on them.
On the rare occassion that I got a day off I would take crew members out and thats when I would break out the jigs(Pt. Wilson Darts), it is one of my favorite methods of salmon fishing and yeah I juiced them up to, usually with squid, it quickly became my favorite, if you couldn't tell from my previous post. Good luck, good fishing

AK, thanks for the results of the bait oil experiences. It coraborates what I have found also (I posted that squid oil was the best "sleeper" scent for salmon, a long time ago). You can use more of it than sardine oil because of it's mellower smell, and have more of an oil scent trailer slick too.

Another thing I was saving for my book is too use squid tenacles on the hooks of hootchies instead of herring strips. Also, cutting up real fresh squid bodies into small pieces for using in the red mesh used for single egg 'spawn bags' is better than tuna balls made that way, for Kings up the river. Don't tell anyone. ... Another good trick I posted hasn't gotten a coraboration - yet. Dye fresh raw baby scallops pink and put on size 1 hooks for drift fishing or float fishing for steelies. It works. I haven't used them for awhile, but I verify it works well when I used to do that. Anyone try that yet?