Learn About a Fish's Sense of Smell

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Jim Dowd at Zoar Outdoor for Expert Village to talk with you about fly casting and fly fishing. Now that we’ve captured some prey and we identified it and we matched it with this fly, which in this case is called the black nose dace, let’s talk about another sense that you need to be aware of when you are fly fishing, and that is the fish has a very acute sense of smell. Imagine how strong your sense of smell, or how powerful it would have to be, if you were an anadromous fish like a salmon or a shad way out in the ocean, swimming your way all the way from somewhere out in the deep sea to your natal stream, indeed right to the riffle where you were hatched out as a fingerling. Well that sense of smell is also used for them to detect prey and to alert them to issues that involved danger. Think also in terms of what its like for bait fishermen. Often times when bait fishermen change to a fresh bait, they’ll get a hit right away after fishing for minutes, hours or quite a long time with the same bait that was dead. So it is important for you as an angler to deal with that, because often times is what happens is things like bug repellent, sun block or even detergent on your hands carry an odor that can be transmitted to your fly. And if the fish smell it, they are less likely to strike it. So here is a simple little trick to overcome that problem, and what you do is, you find some mud or some sand in the stream, the same water you are going to be fishing, drop the fly onto it, rub it on your hands, get it on your fly, and just thoroughly get that worked into the fly so that it takes on the odor of the water you are fishing. So not only is my fly now ready to sink and fish right away, but I also blocked and masked any odor that might be offensive to a fish. So that is another thing to do to avoid having fishes senses be a problem in your fishing. "