Scent?

So, I've been thinking about re-visiting scent.  I don't normally scent my baits.  I have the "trout dip" stuff from Berkley, and the Pro-cure garlic spray on stuff (which smells somewhat horrific, if I'm honest).  Every so often I try it, and maybe?  Not sure if it does anything. 

I know a lot of folks use various types of scent - sprays, gels, corn soaked in secret juice, hot dogs, etc.  Then there are the soft baits that come soaked in juice of various types.

Does any of it actually work/matter/make a difference?  I'm sure there are TONS of variables here, so maybe it might just be a moot data point?

I switched to using scents a couple of years ago. I have a bottle of herring scent and this year I bought Big Nates Killer scent for Berryessa. It has some garlic, and I'm not so sure that is any better. I'm wondering if shrimp scent would be good for Kokanee since they don't feed on fish. I like a sticky gel more than an oil, which tends to get all over your hands.
I don't always add scent but feel more confident when I do.

Because I’m a steady user of Gulp swimbaits, there’s often a supply of extra Gulp juice laying around. When fishing frozen squid, I usually try to sweeten the offering by soaking some squid in the juice either overnight or on the boat.

Whole squid or strips soaked in the juice have always worked for me, though I haven’t had a control rod baited with unsoaked squid for comparison. Seems better than just dumping the juice after finishing off a pint container of 5-inch swimming mullets.

You can also get a bottle of the juice without swimbaits in it called Gulp Recharge and there are flavor options. I do not work for the maker of these products but am a big fan.

With regards to perch and crappie, scented soft plastics do work better. Another thing I do, if using unscented lures, hard and soft, is to rub them with my fishy hand after having caught that first fish. Even if I only held a fish to be released by the lips, it is enough scent to make a difference.
I wet my hands to touch a C&R fish and it still works. So...get fishy!

Procure Garlic Baitwaxx for planter trout. I caught and released close to 50 in the past 2 weeks.

A surf fishing friend of mine swears by - get this - Taco Bell sauce packets
He dabs a little on his plastic grubs and says it definitely works, I trust him

When jigging squid in Monterey I find that the black spoogey goo left on the hooks always catches another squid, if only one at a time, that goop always works for me

As others have said, Gulp works, in my experience Gulp swim baits out fish Fish Traps or other non-scented brands

A surf fishing friend of mine swears by - get this - Taco Bell sauce packets
He dabs a little on his plastic grubs and says it definitely works, I trust him

When jigging squid in Monterey I find that the black spoogey goo left on the hooks always catches another squid, if only one at a time, that goop always works for me

As others have said, Gulp works, in my experience Gulp swim baits out fish Fish Traps or other non-scented brands

Another Gulp fan here.

Now I'm going to have to try spice things up with Taco Bell sauce, as that sounds just crazy enough so that it must work...

Interesting, thanks for the different inputs.

I feel like I need to do a head-to-head with some of these options!

Sounds like I need to revisit some of the Gulp options again, both in salt and fresh.

I constantly question if scent is meant to catch more fish versus fishermen/women.

When it comes to reaction strikes and fast action presentations, I question if the fish “has time” to consider the scent.
When still fishing or presenting a slow presentation, I feel more confident with scent.

Although, I’ve done a fair amount or A/B testing with inflated nightcrawlers versus garlic-scented inflated nightcrawlers for trout — I’ve observed no difference in bite rate.

I constantly question if scent is meant to catch more fish versus fishermen/women.

When it comes to reaction strikes and fast action presentations, I question if the fish “has time” to consider the scent.
When still fishing or presenting a slow presentation, I feel more confident with scent.

Although, I’ve done a fair amount or A/B testing with inflated nightcrawlers versus garlic-scented inflated nightcrawlers for trout — I’ve observed no difference in bite rate.

For halibut, I mostly troll artificials using a bounce-ball-like setups, which would seem to fit the "reaction strike" mode. Nevertheless, over the past couple of years, I've become sold on scent. Of course, wrt halibut, the sample size is relatively small, but I'm convinced that it helps, both in terms of getting more strikes and in the fish being more "committed", if that makes sense. For example, I've noticed that if a halibut hits but does not get hooked (I only use a single hook, not treble, for the stinger, so there are a fair number of strikes that fail to hook up), it'll hit again--sometimes multiple times. Without scent, my experience is that multiple strikes only ever seems to happen with lingcod, not halibut...