Eating Plecos

I was really into fresh water aquariums for a few years. I started out with mid-sized community tanks before coming to specialize in 'natural aquariums' that didn't require any pumps or filters. Some of my tanks included Hypostomus plecostomus, more commonly known as a 'pleco,' or as a 'sucker.'

Plecos are great in aquariums because they eat algae off of nearly any surface and help to keep the tank clean. The one problem with them in aquariums is that over a few years they tend to get rather bigger than most people are equipped to deal with. Lengths of two feet are common and four footers are not unheard of.

Of course, few people have ever seen one longer than 12 inches because they put a stop to it right there. Either they trade it in to a pet store, euthanize it, or release it into a handy body of water.

For the love of all that is holy, do not take the third option. People in central Florida did and now the fish have rapidly reproduced and become a serious invasive problem.

I write this from a cottage at the Gasparilla Innlet on an island on the Gulf coast of Florida. I spent the day with my friend, George Cera, stalking invasive fish on the mainland with a cast net and a camera.

The use of a cast net is rarely seen among fresh water fishermen in the US. While casting a net is different from that involved in catching fish with a hook and line, I can attest that it takes practice and skill. Larger nets are harder to throw properly. I rarely managed to throw an eight foot net properly, but I've got the knack of it with my four foot net.

We used nets because the three invasive fish on our list are all herbivores that do not readily take lures or bait. Armored catfish, tilapia and plecos. All native fish caught in the net were released. Having knocked out the armored catfish yesterday (dealing with a lot of alligators along the way, which I won't get into here but it will all be detailed in my next book, 'Eating Aliens') we moved on to plecos and tilapia today.

I confess that it felt strange and a little bit wrong when I untangled the medium-sized pleco from my net and dropped it into the waiting cooler. I'd kept these things as pets and while they didn't exactly carry my slippers around I had come to think of them in a decidedly domestic way.

We cooked the pleco and a wild tilapia at George's house a few hours ago. Most readers have probably eaten tilapia and have some idea of what it tastes like. With that as a baseline we cooked the tilapia and the pleco according to identical recipes for a side-by-side comparison according to the recipe that follows. The only difference in preparation is that the tilapia was gutted, scaled and then cooked whole while the pleco was gutted and then sliced in half with a diagonal cut on account of there being next to no meat in the front half. Plecos have large, tough scutes instead of regular scales and there is no sense in trying to scale them. Better to pull the skin and scutes off after cooking.

Mango Pleco


Ingredients:



1 or more plecos, gutted and sliced along the belly towards the end of the tail.

1 ripe mango

Salt

Pepper



Place the fish on a piece of aluminum foil. Shred the mango and stuff the interior of the fish with the fruit. Drizzle the mango juice all over the fish. Salt and pepper to taste. Wrap and seal the aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees F until fully cooked. Time will vary depending on the size of the fish. Check it after 25 minutes and then see if it needs to cook longer.

We used mango because George is fortunate enough to have three different varieties of mango growing in his back yard and dropping fruit everywhere. George was deeply skeptical of the whole idea of eating pleco. From the moment I hauled it out of the water he didn't want to even discuss eating it. In fact he required that I prepare the pleco in a separate container from the tilapia because he didn't want the tilapia he intended to eat to be tainted by the vile pleco.

When both fish finally came out of the oven they looked and smelled like food instead of just the weird dead things that they had previously been. I handed George a fork and suggested that he try some.

Slowly, apprehensively, he placed a fork-full of pleco into his mouth. And he liked it. He really liked it. Then I tried some and I liked it, too. And then we ate some of the tilapia, which had been prepared and cooked identically (and was, if anything, slightly fresher having been caught last).

We both liked the taste and texture of the pleco more than we did the tilapia. The pleco had started out looking like dark meat when we'd gutted and prepped it but by the time it came out of the oven it was white and flaky. It had a firmer texture and a cleaner flavor than the tilapia.

Obviously I am an advocate for fishing, killing, and eating tilapia from Florida's waters on account of them being an invasive species there. And the tilpia really tasted very good. But I did not expect in my wildest dreams to enjoy eating plecos more than tilapia. The plecos were, in all honesty, an after-thought. In fact, I didn't even realize that they were here until a few days ago. I came down here to catch tilapia. But the pleco wins, hands down.

Plecos taste very good. They are absolutely an edible fish and are worth pursuing and using as food. This recipe that I tested it with contained no strong-tasting ingredients. No garlic or peppers to mask any off flavors. Just a little mango to wrap around the flavor of the fish. Pleco tastes superb.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. Please ask for permission to use it with attribution and permission will probably be granted]