As shown by trade catalogs, many of national manufacturers use products of marine origin to produce baits, groundbaits and attractants for freshwater fish. Marine polychaetes, molluscs, cephalopods, crustaceans and fish are among these products. These products are readily available in the world markets and have relatively low cost. Generally, baits, groundbaits and attractants with marine ingredients are usually positioned as instantaneous and attractive for freshwater fish.

Really, the results of field experiments described below show that statements of this kind are untrue. The first typical response both of freshwater and saltwater fish to odors, alien for their environments, is aversion to these odors.

Brief aversion of fish to novel foods, with their odors and taste, is called neophobia while an additional persistent wariness to novel foods is called dietary conservatism (DC) (Thomas et al., 2010). However, there are some part of adventurous consumers (AC) which eat novel foods overcoming their neophobia (specifically, in threespined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus). Generally (Thomas et al., 2010), the presence of AC and DC patterns in natural fish populations allows these populations to develop adaptive foraging strategies in the changing environments.

Typical freshwater feeding organisms	Typical saltwater feeding organisms
Oligochaeta sludgeworms, Tubifex tubifex	Polychaeta ragworms, Nereis diversicolor
Oligochaeta sludgeworms, Tubifex tubifex	Oligochaeta mudworms, Tubificoides benedii
Mollusca zebra mussel, Dreissena polymorpha	Mollusca Black Sea mussel, Mytilus galloprovincialis
Mollusca pearl mussel, Unio pictorum	Cephalopoda long-finned squid, Loligo vulgaris
Amphipoda river sideswimmers, Gammarus pulex	Amphipoda Caspian sideswimmers, Pontogammarus maeoticus
Decapoda narrow-clawd crayfish, Astacus leptodactylus	Decapoda brown shrimp, Crangon crangon
Osteichthyes weatherfish, Misgurnus anguillicaudatus (flesh)	Osteichthyes flathead mullet, Mugil cephalus (flesh)

Note, weatherfish and mullet had distinct "swamp" and "seaweed" odors, respectively

We have tested an attractiveness for freshwater fish odors of feeding organisms of freshwater and saltwater origin. Compared feeding organisms are enumerated in the Tab.1, freshwater feeding organisms were familiar for freshwater fish. Marine organisms, except squids, were delivered in ice from Odesa region, the Black Sea, in Kyiv by car. Raw fresh frozen squids ... Read more »

In the presence of food odor, the duration of taste testing for the most types of food granules as well as the number of repeated graspings of granules with an attractive taste (L-proline, 0,1 M) do not change in carp, Cyprinus carpio, and cod, Gadus morhua (Kasumyan et al., 2009). At the same time, food granules with indifferent or repulsive gustatory taste (L-lysine, 0,1 M) are rejected and repeatedly grasped by fish more frequently on the background of food odor than in water without odor.

Such behaviour manifested by fish in the presence of food odor in response to granules with unattractive gustatory properties is apparently caused by the contradiction between the information coming via different chemosensory canals, olfactory and gustatory. According to Kasumyan et al. (2009), obtained results indicate that food stimulation caused by food odor in the nature can lead to increasing the actual consumption of only those accessible food items that have an attractive taste for fish.

Basic References

Kasumyan A.O., Marusov E.A., Sidorov S.S. 2009. The effect of food odor background on gustatory preferences and gustatory behavior of carp Cyprinus carpio and cod Gadus morhua. Journal of Ichthyology 49, 469-481