Pelengas fish is a mullet, a rather valuable commercial fish. Other names - belengas, peelingas or pilengas - are also correct. Variation of pronunciation depends on the place of catch.
An adult (at the age of six) can reach half a meter in length, but its weight is relatively small - about a kilogram. Older fish, for example, reaching the age of ten, can weigh up to 2.5 - 2.8 kg (although such specimens are rare). Both the head and the torpedo-elongated body are covered with large scales.
Pelengas fish is schooling, semi-migratory: in autumn, it enters accessible rivers and waits for winter, digging into mud pits, and in early spring it returns to its usual environment (in the sea). For example, when entering the Suifun River in October, the fish rises up to Ussuriysk itself (and this is more than a hundred kilometers from the place where the river flows into the sea) and remains for the winter in this entire stretch. In the spring, the pelengas begins its movement to the Gulf of Pera Veliky and “walks” along shallow bays and lagoons, enjoying a detritus. By autumn, pelengas meat becomes especially greasy. The homeland is considered the Sea of Japan (the highest prevalence is recorded in South Korea - in the Amur estuary).
Pelengas fish propagates in May-June, taking a fancy to coastal shallow waters for spawning. Fry can be found even in almost fresh waters at the mouths of streams and rivers. In autumn, the fish again goes for wintering.
Pelengas is the most eurybiontic species of mullet: it tolerates high summer temperatures and low winter equally well, moreover, it calmly reacts to significant fluctuations in salinity.
It feeds mainly on organic residues and polychaetes (polychaete worms), which it collects along the bottom. For spawning, it prefers mainly coastal zones (May-June). The meat is moderately oily, rather dense, but not stiff and not dry, almost white, with a faint pink hue.
Pelengas fish, photo:
Catching this fish is a never-ending topic of discussion at fishing forums. There really is something to discuss here. Successful fishing requires its own tactics and decent experience, since pelengas fish can provide quite decent resistance when fishing for spinning or fishing rods.
The appearance of this fish in the Black Sea is the result of an experiment forty years ago. Then the staff of the Odessa Research Institute rather successfully carried out the acclimatization of the bearing in two seas at once - in the Black and Azov.
The unwillingness to be content with mullet was understandable: the bearing is much larger, it can reproduce along the coast (which facilitates fishing), it is resistant to temperature fluctuations, and is unpretentious in relation to nutrition. Another goal was to improve the climate of the seas - the bearing should have become a kind of cleaner that would collect organic debris accumulating at the bottom. A few years after the experiment (early 90s), pelengas fish became a “commercial species”.
Today, according to data provided by ichthyologists, pelengas has begun to spread in the waters of the Mediterranean.
Pelengas fish is the real queen of the Black Sea dishes. It is suitable for preparing a variety of first courses, and for frying, and for baking, and for stuffing.
