Do fish attractants really work

Fish attractants absolutely work, with lots of development and research behind the leading companies in the angling industry, liquid attractants are fine-tuned to draw fish into your swim. The real question should be whether its worth it for you to be using them or not.

Quite frankly when we first heard of liquid attractants we thought it they were a bit of a gimmick, another way to trick anglers into spending more money at tackle shops. But as we looked into them and experimented with them ourselves we found that in some cases they were an absolutely devastating tactic.

Using attractants

Like us, many anglers weren’t and still aren’t sold on the idea of liquid attractants. Lots of people have had bad experiences with the liquids and consider them to essentially be a scam but the bottom line is, its not whether you use attractants or not, its how you use them.

Allow me to elaborate, let’s say that we’re hypothetically fishing at a specimen lake. There are about 80-100 fish in 3 acres of water, the weather is ideal and we’ve chosen the best swims in the lake. Unless we absolutely nail the right location any attractant/loose feed is irrelevant because, by the time any fish actually stumble across your bait, all the goodness would’ve washed away.

This means that you have to be quite select when fishing with liquids in order to spot a noticeable difference, something we often like to compare it to is fishing with PVA bags. You need to have the right location in order for it to be noticeably effective.

However, we still choose to use liquids in nearly all of our fishing because regardless of whether we can notice it or not it does increase our chances of getting a bite in the event that a carp comes into the proximity of our hook-bait.

Do they actually attract fish

Well in our experience, yes. Although a lot of anglers are skeptical, we did try a little test to see whether our bites would increase on a well-stocked lake. First, we set up a standard method feeder rig and fished for about 2 hours in a completely cold spot with no pre-baiting whatsoever. Then we switched swims to another very similar area of the lake and implemented the same tactics but also used liquid attractants when binding our ground-bait and also used liquid attractants to essentially spike the hook-bait with a little added extra flavour.

Over the years many carp fishing companies have invested a lot of money into making these products effective and they’ve carried out the testing to ensure that it actually makes a difference to your fishing in fair conditions. The problem is that in the real world there are nearly never “fair conditions” so the data will be mixed. But there are a lot of companies developing fish attractants, and we think they’re doing an excellent job with it.

A few brands we’ve tested are Korda Goo and Sonubaits Haze. Korda’s goos are designed primarily for carp fishing since they are a carp fishing company and Sonubaits haze is primarily used in match fishing.

We recently used Sonubaits Haze on one of our fishing trips at a commercial fishery with a high stock of carp and f1’s and we caught plenty. However, anyone with any half-decent rig can catch at a commercial fishery so how can these liquid attractants actually be used in match fishing.

Using liquid attractants in match fishing

Using liquids when match fishing can be a devasting technique because it allows you to gain a competitive edge. Usually, you’re in the same boat as all the other anglers on the lake, everyone’s fishing with the same bait, at the same range, and at the same Island. This means that you have to differentiate yourself in order to make the fish choose your baits and what you have to offer over others. This is where liquid attractants really come into play, they increase the fish’s appetite and draw them into your swim. Think of it a bit like that scene from Nemo, where the shark smells a drop of blood and goes into a ravenous feeding frenzy (although obviously not as extreme).

Using liquid attractants when carp fishing

As we mentioned before we use liquid attractants nearly every time we’re carp fishing because although we might not notice the difference it does increase our chances of getting a bite and landing a fish which makes it worth it.

There are certain times, however, where you may not want to use it more, for instance in the summer when bites are plentiful and often, using a liquid attractant may feel like overkill. But in the winter when the fish have really slowed down feeding and they don’t really want to take the bait, you have to give them that little extra incentive in order for them to take a bite. In these situations we’ve seen liquid attractants really shine, the scent and thick pungent smell are just irresistible to carp.

We love using it in our fishing and I’m sure there are plenty of anglers who’ll disagree but everyone is inclined to their own tactics and in our opinion, using liquid attractants in carp fishing is one of the best.

Conclusion

In summary, using liquid attractants can make a huge difference to your fishing, they’ve been tried and tested to see if the fish actually react to them, which they do and they have helped a lot of anglers, ourselves included in their fishing. But because there is so much variation in the real world, its quite hard to tell whether you’re actually getting good value for money when buying these liquid attractants, so that some people will swear by them, and others will claim they’re a waste of money. Regardless, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion and everyone will have different experiences when implementing liquid attractants into their fishing.

If you liked this article, you can check out more of our articles at improveangling.com. Lots of fishing tips and tactics in store for the future.