I was at a Trout unlimited meeting back in the late 80s, we had a Rep from the major plug company (can't remember what their name was) come to our meeting and show us an incredible video about how they research their plugs and attractants for salmon. They put a bunch of plugs on a spreader bar with a camera attached so they could see the salmon behavior as they attacked the plug. Their research showed that for every fish that hit the lure, between 10-20 came up looked at it and swam away. It had incredible footage of some really large salmon come right up behind the plugs look at it and leave. The cool part was you could watch the Salmon sneak up on the plug, drop back almost out of sight then come screaming back in to take the plug or hit it with there tail. It was amazing how fast they are moving when they hit it. The salmon never took the plug when they first came up to check it out.
They used every thing they could think of to try as an attractant, bilge water, blood, anise oil, vanilla, and most commercially sold products as well as WD-40, even motor oil. What they found is that almost anything that leaves a scent slick will increase your hit rate. WD-40 did as well as any of the commercially sold products. What seemed to work best was whatever bait fish that was running "at that time". If the salmon were feeding on sardines then wrapping a thin fillet of a sardine worked best. This seemed to work with squid, and herring as well.
Starting this thread in the fishing section for others in put
