Marukyu UK have just released a video showing the hard pellets, how thay act in water, and how to use and choose them for your own fishing

The following piece was written a few weeks before the video was made. It’s left here because it contains information that isn’t obvious within the video.

I was talking to Roy Marlow (the fishing consultant at Marukyu) last night. I mentioned that I’d used the Marukyu pellets at the weekend but felt that they were much heavier than traditional pellets and seemed to enter the water more like swan shot than pellets. As usual he had an answer, and as usual it involved me doing some work. He said that the Marukyu pellets are made by a cold process rather than the normal UK process that heats the pellets. Heating of the pellets destroys some of the scent / flavour whereas the Marukyu process seals the flavours in.  He also claimed that the Japanese pellets had more air in them than UK ones, which made them break down quicker, releasing flavour and attractants.

It was time to get the water containers and camera out. I had in the car some 8mm Marukyu pellets and a bag of Sonubaits Fin Perfect 8mm ones.

Marukyu and Sonubaits Pellets

I filled a couple of containers with cold water and put half a dozen Sonu ones in the left hand container and 6 Marukyu ones in the right hand container

Pellets have just been put into the containers

Disappointingly, very little happened to either pellets for the first 15 minutes. Eventually pieces were seen to be breaking off the Marukyu pellets, whereas the Sonu ones retained their shape.

The Marukyu Pellets After 30 minutes

And the Sonubaits Pellets at the same time

By now the dog was telling me that it was time for his walk, so I left the pellets until around 4 o’ clock (two hours after they were immersed).  So here’s the final picture, as you can see the Marukyu ones have completely dissolved whereas the Sonu ones have retained their shape.

Two hours later and dramatic results

Incredibly, when I went to empty the containers I found that the Sonu pellets were still solid, so even if there was a lot of flavour locked into those pellets it was still there !!.

Having followed up this little experiment, it proves to me why the Marukyu pellets work so quickly. After a short time the Marukyu pellets look like a honey comb.
Roy confirmed that the voids were the main areas where the water soluble attractors are stored.

The proteins release the key amino acids very quickly into the water where they rapidly spread. The fish can pick up the scent from a considerable distance and quickly home in on the pellets.

I also asked about banding the pellets. Answer, no problems at all, a banded pellet will stay on the band intact for more than 45 minutes releasing its attractants. In colured water the fish will still find the bait. Also bear in mind that these pellets are environmentally friendly and fish friendly.

These Marukyu pellets have only been out a few days yet some incredible catches have been reported. Too many anglers have reported exceptional catches of Bream and Tench using the Nori Pellets for it not to be true that Nori is also species specific in that although it will still attract carp, bream and tench can not resist it.