So what do you do when somebody claims to have come up with a new product in a particular niche that they claim is “revolutionary” to the market?
I suppose the only practical thing to do is satisfy your curiosity by testing it against something that you have used and are confident in.
In this case, it’s all about the smell – or more appropriately in the bass fishing world – the scent. Rage Fish Attractants has come up with their newest innovation named Liquid Mayhem. We ran across this last year and have been using it since.
The Liquid Mayhem is less a liquid than a pourable paste. While it isn’t firm, it is firm enough to stay on your bait when applied, where applied. All you do is squeeze a bit on the end of your finger, rub it over the surface of your bait and you’re done.
Not Quite 31 Flavors
It comes in three scents or flavors if you will – crawfish, garlic minnow and panfish. We have only used the crawfish up to this point.
On the back of the tube it says that the product, “contains real baitfish infused with powerful amino acids and other bite stimulants designed to target a fish’s olfactory glands and trigger big strikes.” They also claim that fish hold on to the bait longer once it’s applied.
Lastly, they claim that you need only reapply every 30 casts which is far better than any true liquid scents that we’ve ever used.
The interesting aspect of using scents is whether or not they make a substantial enough difference to warrant the cost, time taken to apply them as well as the mess that is associated with several of them.
I’m gonna show my age here and divulge what was once a fairly well kept practice of a host of fishing pro’s. Back in the old days it wasn’t uncommon for them to keep a tube of Preparation H in the boat.
No, it wasn’t ‘cause the seats were so uncomfortable that they caused a condition that required this medication. It was because good ole Prep H contained a concentration of anise and when applied, stayed on a bait for a decent period of time.
But you probably didn’t really want to know that anyway. The point is that when the fishing gets slow, sometimes making a subtle change can make a not so subtle difference. One of those changes that is quick and easy to make is adding a little funk – or scent – to your lure.
Simple Application
The Liquid Mayhem is reddish in color for the crawfish scent but doesn’t affect the color of your bait whether you’re using soft plastics or a hard bait. Squeeze it directly onto the lure, spread it around and get back to fishing.
Yeah, it does leave a smell on your fingers but if you were overly concerned about that you wouldn’t be handling fish at all, right?
In the time we’ve been using the Mayhem we can say a few things with certainty.
To begin with, the claim that it stays on your lure for up to thirty casts is pretty accurate. You can feel this on the bait not to mention that you can smell it.
Even after you can’t detect it with your nose that doesn’t mean that a fish can’t. Let’s face it, us humans weren’t blessed with the best sniffers on the planet so we prefer to just reapply the stuff and ere on the side of caution.
Secondly, for whatever reason, we only think of using the Liquid Mayhem when the fishing is tough. Under those circumstances, we have on several occasions started catching fish while no one around was having any luck. We can attribute that to the fact that we were the only folks who were using the Mayhem.
As to the claim that fish will strike harder, that’s almost impossible to verify or reject. Instead, we focus on the fact that this product has turned some pretty poor days into some pretty good days on the water.
Finally, do the fish hold on longer to a bait that has the Liquid Mayhem on it as opposed to one that does not? We’ve tried using the same baits on the same rigs with the same line. Everything in terms of equipment being identical with the one variable being that one of the lures has the scent while the other doesn’t.
Will You Catch More Fish?
There are days when the catches are identical, some days where the treated lure out catches the plain one and once in a great while, the untreated lure out catches the bait with the Mayhem on it. We want to stress that has happened very rarely.
But through all this we just couldn’t definitively answer the question of whether the strikes were consistently harder on the bait with the juice.
So in the final analysis, is it worth spending about ten bucks to find out for yourself?
Our opinion is … Yeah, it’s more than worth the cost of the product for the potential gain that we have seen and experienced first hand.
Is this the Holy Grail of fishing that will turn every fish in a lake or river into a heat seeking missile bound for your lure? No, but the Liquid Mayhem is a solid product that can turn a pretty dull day on the water into one with some excitement.
| Rage Fish Attractant Liquid Mayhem | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |   |
| Scent that's worth the price | |
See ya’ on the water …
