Ok this is the famous "Bilge Water" story as I recall hearing it (first hand) straight from the lips of the late Charlie White himself ...I heard it while attending one of his famous Salmon fishing seminars at the old Elks Hall in Kelowna.
He claimed that one day he found an old lure laying in bilge water on his boat, he wiped it off with a rag then fished it and to his surprise caught salmon with it, then over time and with repeated use he came to realize that this contaminated lure was actually out fishing all others in his arsenal . He decided to send the lure for chemical analysis and had them run tests to scientifically establish what the mysterious attractant might be that would repeatedly bring the fish in...
Short answer......The chemical they found on the lure in any significant amounts was
Hydrocarbon which if I am correct is a major by product of petroleum or combusted petroleum ?
With this knowledge in hand Charlie began manufacturing his own "Bilge water" and indeed went on to sell buckets of the stuff in small black squirt bottles at his seminars.....I was to become hooked on it too as being thoroughly convinced I bought two bottles myself....Lol
I'm no Chemistry major but .....This may well be the source of the notion that WD works as I believe it too contains Hydrocarbons
Great Character........RIP Charlie.
PS.....On the subject of scent / attractents....... If my own 40 yr Fish keeping (Koi) observations are anything to go by, I can offer this thought....If you want to see a rolling, boiling, mass of Japanese Koi just introduce no more than two small drops of KRILL OIL into my ponds waterfall, then prepare for mayhem when it hits the main pond.... LOL
Fish do indeed respond to scent, and from what I've witnessed with my own fish, more than we might imagine.