wd-40 on bait?????

Troutski said:
Maybe so, that doesn't mean we don't still have a choice in this little matter. Mans foot print is getting larger each day. This is just one way of reducing it one person at a time. WD-40 is noting compared to wood burning...shall we go on?
I must admit I am quite surprised at your response.

Chuck



Brother Chuck, i haven't used wd-40 since 1989.....................:D:D:D


Back then the Big'Un Stripers were out in the middle of a channel. I was casting from the bank to the middle.
 
What troutski said. It's less dense than water so it looks like oil (and we know what oil does to all the water critters). Big change starts with small changes, and wd-40 can be a small change. Its one less thing we have to worry about.
 
Agreed, "this little bit" can make a difference.
 
I've heard many people praise the WD-40 trick.

It just seems counter intuitive to me . . . way better to use a fish oil than petroleum. I've never used it because it doesn't make sense to me and I don't want to pollute any more than I already do with my boat.

I wonder if you could just dip your bait in some Alaska Fish Emulsion for a stinky effect?

Chass
ct
 
I've seen it used for catfish, but I agree with all that has been said here about the harm to the environment.

I've traveled the world an seen other people's wild spaces, and have found here in Oregon it's as good as it gets. I wouldn't want to do anything to change that.
 
It is illegal here and one of the officers I talked to said it has been illegal to use at all for fishing for many years anywhere. Might want to contact your local enforcement office to find out.
 
I used to crab in winchester bay when I was younger off an old dock that was built for the coast guard. Everyone there always used wd-40. They used so much that the water looked like a tanker ship and lost all it's fuel, it was down right sickening. PLEASE JUST USE THIS STUFF FOR SQUEKY HINGES AND DON'T POLLUTE OUR WATERWAYS.
 
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ONCE MORE WITH FEELING!

Amen to what the others have already said. The WD40 topic has come up in some other threads so I wanted to bring this back to the top and share what I found on the company's own website:

"WD-40 Company has taken steps to respect and conserve the environment, and encourages its users to do the same. While WD-40 can be used to help protect fishing equipment from rust and corrosion, WD-40 Company does not recommend using WD-40 to attract fish."

Taken from WD-40 Myths, Legends and Fun Facts
 
i don't normally use WD when fishing, but really don't have a problem with those that do. the next time you fire up your boat, look back and see how much "sheen" is left on the water behind you. then think about how many times a trip you start your boat. how many folks get water in their boat during the day and need to run the bilge pump a bit to take it out? how much spilled fuel goes over with the bildge water? (or the water that runs down the ramp when you pull your plug after you take out.)

i don't think a little squirt of WD here and there really even ammounts to a drop in the proverbial bucket when put into perspective with the ammts of pollutants that go into the water just from recreational boating.


my understanding, and this is just what i heard, whas that by spraying WD on your lure/bait the WD dissolves and lifts the human oils off of it. once put in the water, the WD eventually washes off and takes the human oils/scent along with it...leaving a nice clean and natural smelling human-scent-free bait.
 
Every bit makes a difference. Your argument points to that very fact. Every time someone starts their boat, polluting. Every spray, polluting um period
 
I once spoke in person, with an ODFW Fisheries Biologist. Granted, we're talking 10 years ago or more. But, he said that it is perfectly safe to use WD 40 and spray your bait / lures with it. Even in a small pond, the molecules would equal less than a few drops of rain. In a large impoundment, the effects are even less.

But having said that, I have still never used that product on my gear...let alone in the water.
 
metalfisher76 said:
Every bit makes a difference. Your argument points to that very fact. Every time someone starts their boat, polluting. Every spray, polluting um period

i don't disagee that simply by it's nature, WD40 could be considered a substance that you wouldn't want to introduce in large quantities into a ecosystem and like i said, i rarely, if ever these days, use it myself.

my point is that if you were to consider the ammt that is being put into a large system such as the columbia, or the pacific ocean, the significance is so minor that it probably is not even on a scale that would be measurable in any meaningful quantity. sort of like saying that people urinating over the side of boat (or peeing in the river while swimming) is the same as the raw sewage that spills over from portland during heavy rains. yes, it's both technically introducing raw human waste into the waters....but they are obviously not on the same scale when it comes to measurable impact.

in other words... IMHO there are bigger things to worry about before i am going to worry about some folks shooting a few squirts of WD into the water a few months out of the year.
 
One gallon of oil can contaminate one million gallons of water! If you don't think that is a big deal your dead wrong! Well over a gallon of WD 40 gets used in the Columbia river and it's tributaries every year! That's one million gallons of water dirtied up because of some guys "theory"!
 
ok, i won't disagree with that, but we aren't talking about a gallon of oil. i would be willing to bet that 1 gallon of WD is far less harmful than 1 gallon of oil. and again, i look at the big picture perspective. a guy i fish with a lot uses WD on everthing. he still has the same can he had back during the fall season and it looks as though he will get though the spring run with it as well. it would probably take him the better part of a decade to introduce 1 gallon of WD into the river system...and he fishes quite a bit.

now, per Wiki, the average flow of the CR at the mouth is 265,000 cu/ft per second. using a handy online unit conversion system that translates to roughly 1,982,337.6 gallons of water per second. let's say that the average person lets their bait "soak" for 30 minutes before reeling in and re-scenting. 30 minutes = 1800 seconds which means that while his bait was in the water, that squirt ( .25 to .5 ounces maybe? ) has dispersed through roughly 3.5 billion gallons of water. (assuming one was fishing the lower CR on an "average" flow period.)

as we used to say in the Navy... Dilution is the solution. i don't know what the threshold would be measured in ppb before WD reached a concentration to be even close to being considered harmful, but even if 200 guys were on the river shooting a squirt of WD on their baits at one time...i still don't see where the "harm" will come from.

just playing a bit of devil's advocate here.
 
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Swamp Puppy said:
ok, i won't disagree with that, but we aren't talking about a gallon of oil. i would be willing to bet that 1 gallon of WD is far less harmful than 1 gallon of oil. and again, i look at the big picture perspective. a guy i fish with a lot uses WD on everthing. he still has the same can he had back during the fall season and it looks as though he will get though the spring run with it as well. it would probably take him the better part of a decade to introduce 1 gallon of WD into the river system...and he fishes quite a bit.

Times that by the 10,000-20,000 fisherman that do the same and you got dozens of gallons of WD 40 in the water. I don't see why WD40 would be much better for the environment than oil. I wasn't talking crude oil. I was talking about motor oil. WD 40 is petroleum based and I would imagine it is probably close to 75% petroleum. That is a lot of contamination! There are better working scents available that don't harm the environment and there cheap. It's just one more thing we can easily do to help reduce our impact on this planet that thousands and thousands are unwilling to do!

So if I were to change the oil in my car and pour it into the Tualatin River it's fine because it will be diluted by the time it reaches the mouth of the Columbia? What happens to the animals that come into contact with it before it has a chance to dilute?
 
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first off, lots of things are "petroleum based" which doesn't mean that they are the same as dumping pure motor oil into the water.

secondly, i am not disputing that in some small spectrum, the entire cumulitive quantity of WD40 that has ever been added to the river has not had some miniscule affect. (maybe one carp somewhere got sick... lol. ;) )

my point is that if you are truly concerned about it to the point of condemning others for using it, i would ask then what are YOU doing to keep the waters clean? have you stopped running gas powered boats in it? do you keep the water inside your boat until you get home and drain it into an approved disposal container? have you stopped using cured eggs and other baits, which are apparently killing smolt, in our river systems ? have you found a way to keep the grease that is oozing out of your trailer bearings from polluting the water when you launch/recover your boat? do you retain all manners of human waste on your boat until you can dispose of it properly?

again, i am just making a comparison. IMHO, before i worry about something as small as WD40 being used as a scenting agent, i think i would make sure i was doing everything i could to reduce the larger impacts first.

FYI - i do not use WD as a scenting agent any longer as i have found something else that seems to work better. meaning that i finally caught a fish....lol.
 
Hmmm.... WD40 as a scenting agent....

Everyone talks about major pollution causes, but a couple are always overlooked due to ‘who they are’ and the ‘cost’ of correcting the problem. All of us are the cause and the solution… every little thing we do will either be another hole bored or plugged in the ecological boat we are sailing on. It is ‘our’ choice if we sink or swim.
As everyone should be aware, three of the major polluters of the Willamette/Lower Columbia are the cities of Eugene, Salem, and Portland with their ‘accidental’ over flows of their sewage systems every time it rains. Add to them all of the small municipality’s along the rivers mixed with the various small businesses that dump ‘tons’ of pollutants into our watersheds due to uncontrolled waste water runoff. These alone amount to far more contamination than even the Exxon Valdez did.
Several years ago, I was part of an ecological survey group that took water samplings from all around Oregon and Washington. Most of what we found was as expected, with groundwater contamination from both agricultural and population centers being #1 with a bullet. The surprise is the pollution we found in many high mountain lakes and streams. In some of the more remote lakes along the Pacific Crest Trail, we found significant trace levels of the aromatic hydrocarbon Benzene (N6H6), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbonyl sulfide (H2S), ammonia (NH3), and several other miscellaneous liquid effluent petrochemicals that are the by-product of spent Jet Fuel(s). Now, if mentioned out loud you will hear a roar of protest stating that it is just ‘pre-existing’ chemicals present everywhere. Our findings however indicated severely increased levels along the jet paths used by commercial airliners.
Bottom line is it is up to you if you decide that ‘little’ amount of WD40, few drops of oil leaking from your outboard motor, that slow drip from your engine block, that plastic bottle you filled with water and let sink, or that wad of fishing line you toss into the water is really polluting or not. As for myself (and many others), I maintain my equipment, do not use products that may add to the problem, and clean up after myself and others when on, in or around the water.
You know that old saying, “ don’t sh___ where you eat!” well , think about it for a minute BEFORE you toss that cigarette butt out the window of your car or over the side of your boat.
 
I'm late again!

I'm late again!

I'm late again I know! I've seen WD-40 used and used it myself afew times. I was never sure it was helping. My dad tought me to keep a coffee can with dish soap in the boat. After rigging up we would put the rig (including weights) into the can for a few minutes while we cleared the decks before trolling. Whenever the rig came in it went into the soap, even if it had not been in a fish first. We always caught more fish when we had the can!

Remember that society's solution to polution has alway been dillution!:shock::( ....... and still is!

GD
 
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GDBrown said:
I'm late again I know! I've seen WD-40 used and used it myself afew times. I was never sure it was helping. My dad tought me to keep a coffee can with dish soap in the boat. After rigging up we would put the rig (including weights) into the can for a few minutes while we cleared the decks before trolling. Whenever the rig came in it went into the soap, even if it had not been in a fish first. We always caught more fish when we had the can!

Remember that society's solution to polution has alway been dillution!:shock::( ....... and still is!

GD

Yep... dillute and send it downstream, that way it is the other guys problem.
 
GD - i use the same method as you. all my gear goes into a bucket of lemon joy for a rinse up. i wear latex gloves to wash the gear, then scent it and send it overboard. lures and weights both go in the bucket. same deal when the rigs come up...straight into the soap bucket. seems to work good for me so far.

FYI - i am not advocating the use of WD. My point was that there are a lot of things that each of us do that are more harmful than a little WD on a lure. before we start condemning someone else as being enemies of the environment for their practices, perhaps we should all take a look in the mirror first.
 
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