A good 5 or so years ago me and my mate did a night session for tench. As an experiment we bought 4 tins of luncheon meat, all the same brand, we cooked 2 tins in vindaloo curry sauce and left two as they were. We fished a double peg the entire night switching between the curried meat and the standard meat every cast.
That night we must've caught 25-30 tench between us, not one small than 3lbs and running to 5 or 6lbs. Every one of those fish came to the curry meat, neither of us even managed a bite on the unflavoured stuff.
So yeah, experimenting is good - it can really give you an edge when the fish have seen it all before.