I picked up a bottle of the new Anise and Triple Threat scents to try and put a few drops of each in its own bag of baits and played with them this morning. Crappies seemed to prefer the Triple Threat but I would have liked the action a smidge hotter than it was. I fished these on an inner city lake complex that has a strong crappie and sunfish population that as a rule provides plenty of action but a serious cold front passing thru pretty much put the bite in the can. I tried the Triple Threat in a bag of 1.5" Thump-Its as well as another bag of the same baits with the Anise, both bags containing 4 different color combos that I favor. I also carried a bag of the four colors but totally free of scent. The Triple Threat was clearly the scent of choice this morning once I located some slightly active fish.
I'm going to repeat this little test in a week or so just to let this front business pass and things get back to normal for this time of year. We're due to see a low in the mid-40's tonight then climbing to near 80 by Monday. These radical temperature swings can play havoc with the fishing but later this week more normal temps are coming with 60's for highs and upper 40's for lows. Then we'll see how things play out for the new scents.
A few years ago I did some stuff using the Upper Hand scents and found they do well if added to bags of baits rather than trying to cook them into the plastic, so that will remain my course of action. Its been my personal experience that anise is a great panfish scent however today the fish seemed to prefer the Triple Threat. I did not opt for the garlic scent that's part of the new line-up simply because I don't like the smell of garlic on everything. The anise is a very tolerable smell. The Triple Threat I think is a blend of minnow, leech and maybe crawfish and isn't really intolerable. I don't think I want the Triple Threat on all my clothes or hands for a whole trip though. Using the towel after threading a bait on the jig was imperative. lol
