Fish love Fish Kandy!

Product review - Fish Kandy slow-release, long-life tuna berley

Katch 1 Fish Kandy is a relatively new product that’s quickly gaining the respect of anglers around New Zealand. A specially formulated long-life berley that needs no refrigeration, Fish Kandy is made from tuna and designed to release its scents and oils slowly.

Most anglers understand the benefits of a good berley trail. Berley attracts fish within range of an angler’s baited hooks and holds them in the area so that they can be fished for. A good berley trail can make the difference between a highly successful fishing session and a dud. Good anglers are always on the lookout for new or ‘secret’ berleys that will improve their catch rates.

Once upon a time berley was home made from unwanted fish scraps, ‘rubbish’ fish and whatever else could be gathered while out fishing, or at home using much the same raw material, plus cereal, fish oils and anything else the creative angler could dream up.
Many anglers still make their own berley, often following arcane recipes handed down through the generations, but most of us have succumbed to the convenience of store-bought berley, frozen, dry or long-life.

Berley comes in so many forms these days it can be difficult to know which to buy. Berley is manufactured in numerous flavours, quantities and formulas. Some berleys contain shellfish; others contain oily fish, cereal or mixtures of all three. Some berleys are frozen in conveniently sized blocks, complete with a mesh bag; others are sold dry as pellets, which need no refrigeration.

Fish Kandy doesn’t need refrigeration either, but it’s not strictly a ‘dry’ berley. Instead, it is supplied in dense blocks, ‘bombs’ or pellets positively oozing oils and scents. Made from southern bluefin tuna, sourced in South Australia where there is a thriving tuna ranching industry, the berley is manufactured using byproducts of tuna processing.

This is hydrolysed at low temperature to produce an oily slurry to which is added flour, glucose and kelp powder to produce a slow-release, long-life berley that needs no refrigeration. The process retains all of the tuna’s natural oils and pheromones. The oil works the water’s surface and the heavier than water fish slurry plumes downward to create a ‘top to bottom’ net of attractant. Vacuum-packed in plastic, the product is shelf-stable, so it can be stored on board your boat or kept in your tackle bag. Better still, any portion of the berley left over after a fishing session can be re-used next time you go out.
Supplied in a variety of pack sizes, including ‘Berley Tossers,’ small chunks designed to be tossed from the boat or rocks by hand, 500g bricks and one and two kilo bombs, there’s a suitable Fish Kandy product for every application.

To look at, Fish Kandy is a dense, dark coloured material, too hard to be a paste, but soft enough to easily mould by hand. It has a distinctive, pungent, though not especially unpleasant odour, but be careful of spilling any oil that may have oozed from the product or gathered in the plastic bag. It’s sticky and very difficult to get out of clothes.

I’ve been using Fish Kandy for several months, including most of the winter just past. Winter fishing is never easy and berleying isn’t always enough to turn sluggish fish onto the feed. So trialling this product through the toughest fishing months was a reasonably stern test.

I am happy to report, however, that Fish Kandy attracts and holds fish. I’ve also come to appreciate its convenience and the way I can simply throw any berley left over after a fishing session into a plastic bag and forget about it until next time. It can even be left in the berley pot, if you’re feeling that lazy.

I’ve tried deploying Fish Kandy in lots of ways. I’ve put it into a mesh bag hung off the transom or used it in a wobble pot suspended close to the bottom. I’ve also broken the bricks into smaller pieces and mashed them through the berley pot, which works well, but pretty much negates the product’s long-lasting, slow release properties.

If anything, the slow rate at which Fish Kandy dissolves, particularly when the water is cold, may limit its effectiveness. Although the formula is very concentrated, it takes a long time for any meaningful quantities to leach into the water, although a visible slick forms soon after the berley is deployed, so it may be doing good work almost invisibly.

Particle size is extremely small, which may be a good thing, especially in summer, when berley is often completely consumed by small fish before it gets anywhere near the bottom. With Fish Kandy it’s mostly scent and oil that’s dispersed into the water, along with a cloud of very fine particles.

While winter strayline fishing, I’ve had the best success with the smaller bricks, usually broken up a bit to speed the dispersion of scent and oil. I’ll often augment the Fish Kandy with small pieces of berley or other baitfish tossed into the berley trail at intervals. Without the hordes of pickers common in summer, these chunks often find their way into the stomachs of snapper and other fish, convincing them, along with the tantalising but less satisfying trail emanating from the Fish Kandy in the berley pot, to hang around and check out any other offerings – like my bait!

A recent charter to Great Barrier Island with Damian Clayton aboard Diversity opened my eyes to some of the other possibilities of Fish Kandy. Clayton uses it regularly, if not exclusively, and rates the product highly. Like me, he appreciates its no-mess, no refrigeration storage attributes and the fact that one block lasts a long time in the water.
He also tends to break up the larger blocks, especially when the water is cold, and he showed me a neat trick. Fish Kandy is malleable enough to mould around a hook and use as a bait. He tells me he’s caught more than one good snapper this way, so the product is obviously attractive to fish.

Probably the best thing about Fish Kandy is its convenience. I now carry a couple of 500g bricks in my tackle bag at all times. That way I always have berley with me, no matter who’s boat I’m fishing from. Tossers are ideal for rock fishers and also have their advocates amongst beach fishermen, while the larger one and two kilogram ‘bombs’ and berley ‘slabs’ are ideal for the boat. Bombs fit nicely into Katch 1 berley pots and slabs are easily broken up if desired.

Katch 1 Fish Kandy is imported and distributed by Sport Fishing New Zealand. It is available from most good fishing tackle and bait outlets, or directly from Sport Fishing New Zealand’s website at www.sportfishingnz.com.

By John Eichlesheim