Years ago I was chatting to this old boy who was telling me how his best tide (3days) of surf fishing for bass was at St Ouens Bay over here. He said he had about 50 bass in three evenings and they fell to bunches of lugworm, but he put the extra big haul down to the fact a bottle of Pernod had spilt on the towel he had them in. He said for me to pour Pernod on my worms and see if it makes a difference, so I bought a bottle of anniseed food flavouring and tbh it didnt make any huge improvement. Interesting though that since that conversation (about 15 years ago) I have seen loads of bass lures with an aniseed flavour, so maybe the old boy was onto something.
****, something for you to consider here. When at school and doing cookery lessons, I had a bottle of pear flavouring. Smelt gorgeous, just like pear drops. So with me being a typical teenage twat, I put a capful of the stuff in my mouth. Nearly burnt my mouth out - or so it felt. The point being that the annised flavouring you had, if it was the catering stuff i am thinking of, would only have one or maybe two drops into possible 1.5 to 2 litres of food mix (cake for example). Whereas the pernod would have had the flavour diluted to a pallitable "mix". Also, by the time the guy was fishing (unless he was being stupid and knocking the stuff back whilst fishing) would have probably spilt the liquid much earlier on. Allowing for the alcohol to evaporate off and very little of the original drink itself actually making contact with the worms wrapped in the towel in question.
As for scents in general, I have noticed that an awful lot of SP's seem to reek of lighter fluid. Same stuff as you might was out a reel's bearings or fill up your Zippo with. How the hell they find this attractive, I dont know. But just as with light being seen differently by fish, maybe certain smells are scented differently too. Basically givng a "scent spectrum" thru which the fish will either taste something as really good thru to really foul (for me, fresh fish smell lovely, but leave them a few hours in the sun....). Even possible that there are scents we simply cannot detect, that they can. Possibly vice versa too.
Could it be that just as we - and other animlas - sweat and release pheremones when in a state of panic, that fish do a similar thing too? If so, then its quite possible that there is something within this anniseed kinda smell that very closely matches what predatory fish are looking for in a panicked fish / bait??
There was a load of stuff going around a few years ago about spraying your baits with WD40. Have never deliberately tried it, altho some may have inadvertantly made its way thru to my bait when spraying bag zips or when the boats engine has gotten a little too damp and I have sprayed all the plug leads etc. I dont for one minute believe that fish would be attracted to the poisonous chemicals within such a spray, but if the do scent / smell things in a different spectrum to us, then its possible that something within that liquid is attractive to certain species.