Catfish Pro Fish Care Kit

Contents & Coverage

There are three items in the pouch. The main one is the antiseptic gel, which is made specifically for use on fish, and alongside it come applicator swabs for putting it on and a bottle of hand sanitiser for your own hands once the fish is back.

A 100ml bottle is a generous amount of treatment. It's more than three times the size of the 30ml bottles in kits like the Korda Carp Care Kit, which matters if you're dealing with big catfish or fishing a lot between top-ups.

The light blue colour helps as well, as it shows exactly which areas you've covered.

To be fair, it's a single treatment, whereas the Korda kit pairs a cleaner with a Propolis sealant and the Gardner Intensive Carp Care Pack adds a spray to its gel. For one antiseptic gel with everything you need to apply it, though, I think it covers the essentials well.

Ease of Use

How does it work on the bank? You can open the gel one-handed, leaving your other hand free to steady the fish on the mat, and you then use a swab to apply the gel to the hook hold or damaged area. Keep the fish wet while you work, and return it as soon as the gel is on.

The colour is the clever bit. A clear gel can be hard to spot on a wet, slimy flank, but a light blue one shows where it's gone, so you're less likely to miss a patch or go over the same area twice.

What holds it to 8.0 is the swab step. Working gel on with a swab is slower than a quick burst from a pump spray, especially across a big fish, so it pays to have the pouch open and a swab ready before the fish comes out of the net. It's still simple, just not the quickest.

Portability

The kit comes in a Catfish-Pro rig pouch, a zipped pouch that keeps the gel, sanitiser and swabs together with the rest of your catfish tackle.

It should slip into a rucksack or a carryall without any fuss, and because everything is in one place, you won't be searching for a swab with a fish waiting.

The 100ml bottle is bigger than a 30ml dropper, so the pouch isn't the smallest around, and that's the trade-off for carrying more gel. Is it a problem? Not for most anglers, as it's still a compact pouch that takes up very little space among the rest of your kit.

For me, it's very easy to carry for a kit with three items in it, and it's small enough to live in your catfish bag permanently, which is exactly where fish care should be.

Is it good value for money?

It's a mid-priced kit, and with 100ml of gel plus the swabs and hand sanitiser, you're getting a lot of treatment for the money.

A big bottle should also last a good while between top-ups, even with several fish a session, and it's handy to have the sanitiser in the same pouch rather than buying it separately.

The Gardner Intensive Carp Care Pack gives you a gel and a spray instead, and that's the better choice if you want two different treatments for shallow and deep damage. If you'd rather have one antiseptic gel and plenty of it, the Catfish Pro kit makes a lot of sense.

Overall, I'd recommend the Catfish Pro Fish Care Kit to catfish anglers first and foremost, and to carp anglers who target big fish and want a large bottle of easy-to-see gel, with swabs and hand sanitiser, in one zipped pouch.