The Pickled Fish Bowl is the new purple food item, the recipe of which is found by fishing.
The tooltip on the item is deliberately vague, only says it "attracts fish". I haven't tested it myself, seeing as it requires a substantial amount of clam gall, which is simply too expensive right now to throw away on this.
However, people who have used it say that it increases your chances for a larger number of loot drops per line thrown, so you can get multiple drops instead of just 1 per bait. Also, several people are now saying that this ONLY works if you are fishing with ONE other person. Can this really be true? Is this really working as intended, or bugged? The gold recipe seems to be bugged, since it's a drink but doesn't reguster as a drink, so it's not hard to believe that the purple recipe might be bugged as well.
I have fished a lot, in fact I have finished Master Angler and all DLC zones, and I was happy about seeing this new recipe, and wanted to get back into fishing again with it. But, if this really only works while fishing with ONE other person, then it's a really horrible game design, and I can't see myself using it at all.
Fishing is usually a lonesome business, few people fish, and often you're left on your own. In fact, 95 % of all my fishing for Master Angler and DLC zones has been solo. Unless you're a part of a dedicated fishing guild, and I can't spare guild slots for that, then the odds are that you will fish alone most of the time. When people do fish in groups, like right now in Summerset where there's a fishing frenzy going on, you're often bombed by gangs of 4-5 people fishing with you. Both of these scenarios would mean the fishing food will not work, if it is true that it only works when exactly TWO people are fishing together.
I cannot for the life of me think why ZOS would implement something like this. Fishing is already extremely under-rewarding as it is, and we need encouragement to go fish. Did someone really think it was too OP if the food worked while fishing alone? Is there any particular reason to lock off the food effect if you're fishing alone? I really hope this is either a false rumor, or perhaps a bug in the food effect that will be fixed, if not, then you can really forget about me throwing away expensive ingredients for something as absurd as a food that requires you to always be fishing with exactly ONE other person.