To be honest I can still smell the finger nail polish on all of them I made after 3 months. This is after being in the open and being fished for some of them. Even after putting scent on them I can smell the nail polish. But I can smell it on my wifes fingernails a week after she puts it on and has washed dishes, taken 8 showers and almost all of it is worn off.
Do I think it matters, for your every day fishing trip and the standard crappie, gill or other, no I don't. You put the jig close and set the hooks fast enough when they hit and the fish don't care. Now when fishing for slabs or for seasoned fish I absolutely think it CAN make a difference. If I can smell it, the fish can smell it for sure. And I bet more than one lunker has watched a jig and got a whiff of something that told it hey that's not food and you never knew that it was there.
A lot will disagree but with what I have seen fishing for steelhead I will never doubt the ability of a fish to smell again. A jig finished with solvent based head cement going through a hole with 20+ steelhead and watch them part in front of it was something to see. Especially when the same jig with no head cement went right beside them and they never moved. Both jigs were made by me 14 months before they were fished.
I honestly carry 3 jig boxes when I jig fish:
One with whatever
One with older well aired out jigs
One with nothing solvent based in it and has never had anything solvent based close to the jigs. But to be honest, most of the time it doesn't come down to having to open this box. But I would rather have it than go home skunked.
I love taking my kids fishing, now if I could just manage to fish at the same time.