It is widely thought that shiny objects can opearte as fish lures. But there's an going debate wether it really serves to function by attracting more fish or just a marketing gimmick.
It can be both. The glittery paint not only attracts more fish but also boat buyers.
According this book, A Beginner's Guide to Ice Fishing, to attract fish to your bait in the daytime, drop a handful of crushed oystershells through a hole in the ice. The shells will glitter on the lake bottom and lure the fish to the location of your bait.
As for the humans love for glitter, an excerpt of this Mental Floss article explains:
Culturally, of course, we love shiny things, perhaps because they are associated with wealth and status: flashy cars, blinged out accessories, even solid gold toilets. But the roots of our attraction to All Things Sparkly goes deeper. Anthropologists have noted that many hunter-gatherer tribes equated shiny things with spiritual powers. Prehistoric man also had a habit of polishing his bone tools. But it seems to be more than just an “ooh, pretty,” phenomenon. Babies, after all, can’t tell a diamond-coated Rolex from a Timex, but new research shows that kids favor putting shiny objects into their mouths over matte materials. And it turns out, there’s an evolutionary reason for that.
According to researchers from the University of Houston and Ghent University in Belgium, our impulse for shiny things comes from an instinct to seek out water. The theory is that our need to stay hydrated has kept mankind on the lookout for shimmering rivers and streams. And thanks to natural selection, that’s left us with an innate preference for things that sparkle.