We know bass have a very acute taste and smell, but we don't know how they interpert taste and smell. What does anise taste/smell like to a bass? Is ther something they eat naturaly that has the taste? Most bait-fish, crawdads ect. have a very high salt content, so that easily explains why bass eat salted plastic worms, ect., they are accustomed to it. Vegetables? Bass are surronded by aquatic weeds, trees, moss ect., so they are accustomed to those smells. As fingerlings they eat aquatic insects that live among and eat aquatic vegetation. You can assume aquatic insects taste like vegetation they eat. And perhaps bass just become accustomed to the taste of banana flavored worms, after they tasted a hundred of them.