I think mo65 might have better luck catching something on that Quarter Pounder than just an onion! At least there's meat on that!

This topic has been quite entertaining...it has raised more of a debate on scent issues, rather than the original poised question or topic "a trick that never fails when all else fails". I've never heard of an onion being used as bait for bass..then again, I don't bass fish much. But I can say with certainty, when fishing with BAIT, not lures or soft plastics..you want the best or freshest bait you can find. Scent, does attract fish. Scent can work in your favor and against you. Just about every lure company makes some sort of fishing scent/attractant to add to your soft plastics and live or chunk bait. They also make scent removers such as fishermens soap to remove the human scent. Think about scent and predator fish: A shark can smell a drop of blood for miles. Now back to the onion... When I go to the lake this summer to get my bassin' on..I'm going to put out a rod with a nice chunk of fresh onion, probably a Vandalia or Spanish onion as they are the sweetiest, while I'm fishing the traditional way of using artificials. We'll see what happens...

I think any success generated by a scent product is more a factor of the confidence it may give the angler. I have yet to notice a difference in catch rate when using them or not. I do firmly believe that certain scents will repel fish, things like sunscreen and insect repellent. It has been proven that fish avoid acids. I think this is where the old superstition of spitting on your bait may have some basis as saliva is a base ph substance and will to a degree neutralize weak acids.

I'm going out to try it right now! I will post my results.

Ha Ha Ha! Threads like this kill me. "You should only fish artificials for bass!!!" You know why artificials hold sway over livebait? Primarily commercialism. Secondarily laziness. And third is convenience.

Commercialism. Some of the first bass tournaments were sponsored by bait manufacturers. They wanted to make sure that supporting tournaments had a high likelihood of promoting sales of their artificial baits. They also didn't want to risk being beaten by minnows or night crawlers or live frogs. Here's the rub. Uncle Josh was also one of the first bass tournament sponsors, so they changed that really quickly to say all artificials... um... and pork rinds. I'ld be willing to bet if Joe's Worm Ranch was an early bass tournament sponsor that it would have read all artificials, pork rinds, and Joe's hybrid hand wrangled nightcrawlers.

Laziness? You might think I am kidding, but I am not. I know that most of the time I can plunk a big old threadfin shad in front of a bass and he will eat it. Not always, but often enough that if I could catch shad every time I went out I might never have learned to fish anything else. Almost certainly when it has a hook through its nose causing it to swim erratically. It seems pretty easy on the face of it. You still have to find the bass and learn to put the bait where it belongs. The key is you can't always catch bait, and in many parts of the country its hard to find stores that sell decent live minnow anymore. In addition the more hardy store bought minnows don't always produce as well as the fragile common bait species you can catch wild. So, you have to catch your own, and you have to have a system that keeps them alive long enough to use them. If it takes a while you might find that you used up your whole day catching bait and never got to fish.

Convenience. Hey, if you are no good at catching bait you can always go down to the store and buy a package of rubber worms. If you don't use them all or you buy extras you don't even have to go to the store next time. They keep. Crankbaits don't go bad in your tacklebox, and you don't have to aerate them and feed them like minnows. You don't even have to take them off the line.

And... skill in finding and catching fish trumps either. I fished a derby series one year that allowed any legal method. I threw mostly (remember that word) artificials, but a lot of guys would use tilapia or bluegill for bait going after toads. I won two out of six in the series, and took checks in a couple more. I finished 3rd in their fishoff, and I got a check and a trophy for 2nd overall for the series. Every fish I caught was on artificials, and the guy who took first also threw all artificials.

Now for the amusing anecdote. In one derby in the series I decided to try some minnows. I bought a bunch of shiners and set up a bait bucket to float in my livewell. I had a couple spots where I knew big fish hung out. I set up split shot rigs and balloon rigs for shiner fishing, and I set out to drift or slow retrieve baits along a couple key brush lines. I spent an hour on one and half an hour on another before I picked up a flipping stick with a big old creature bait tied on. In about 10 flips I put a 2 pounder in the boat. In the next half an hour I caught a 5.6, 4.7, and a 3.9 along with a couple more 2+ fish. It was a 3 fish limit for the derby. Those three fish won the derby for me. I didn't have big bass, but the guy who did fishing livebait only had a 6 for his big fish and a couple barely keepers.

Inspite of the fact that I had some good fish in the livewell I was a little frustrated with having gone out and bought shiners that never produced a fish. Towards the end of the day I headed for a spot that holds numbers of small bass where you can almost always catch a few. I rigged up a split shot rig and a shiner. I tossed it up past where I could see several bucks swimming around in the shade of a tree and slowly brought the minnow into their comfort zone. They ignored it. I did that several times, even twitching and crawling the bait like I might a Texas rig or a Carolina rig. One little bass finally got tired of me irritating him and he struck with a vengance when I tried to provoke a reaction strike by jerking the bait away from him. He absolutely knocked the bejeebers out of the split shot. I reeled him half way to the boat clamped down on that sinker with my shiner trailing behind.

So, you can say what you like in a superior huff about fishing with artifiicials, but livebait fishing is not necessarily easier or guaranteed to put fish in the boat. You still have to fish, and you still have to get them in the boat. If somebody out fishes you then they out fished you. Period. If that bothers you then up your game.

interesting..... i sorta dont believe it! :p

hmm take a photo of the fish you caught on the onion in his mouth,like to see that one,you must be fishing in a pond, rivers and lakes might be hard to do that.
gotta find the bass first

this is very interesting!