They're not ready. Check out my blog on hops. It shows a picture of exactly how your hops should look when they're ready. I've been growing for 4 years now, and what some people call "a heavy hop smell" has been a faint odor for me. Some people have a better sense of smell I suppose.
Anyways... it's not all about the smell for me, but the feel. If they're light and papery, they're ready. A good trick is if you can drop them on a hard floor and they break apart, they're probably ready. That's not always true though. When you start seeing some of them turning brown, a majority of them are probably ready for harvest.