Other names - belengas, pelingas or pilengas - are also correct. The variation in pronunciation depends on the location of the 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, reaching, for example, ten years of age, can weigh up to 2.5 - 2.8 kg (although such specimens are rare). Both the head and the torpedo-like elongated body are covered with large scales.
Pelengas fish are schooling, semi-anadromous: in autumn it enters accessible rivers and waits out the winter, burrowing into muddy pits, and in early spring returns to its familiar environment (in the sea). For example, 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 throughout this stretch. In spring, the pelengas begins to move to the Gulf of Pera Velikogo and “walks” along shallow coves and lagoons, feasting on detritus. By autumn, pelengas meat becomes especially fatty. The Sea of Japan is considered the homeland (the highest prevalence is recorded in South Korea - in the Amur estuary).
Pelengas fish breeds in May-June, choosing 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 leave for the winter.
Pelengas is the most eurybiont species of mullet: it tolerates high summer temperatures and low winter temperatures equally well, and also calmly reacts to significant fluctuations in salinity.
It feeds mainly on organic remains and collects them along the bottom. For spawning, it chooses mainly coastal zones (May-June). The meat is moderately fatty, quite dense, but not hard and not dry, almost white, with a barely noticeable pink tint.
Pelengas fish, photo:
Catching this fish is a never-ending topic of discussion on fishing forums. There really is a lot to discuss here. For successful fishing, you need your own tactics and decent experience, since the pelengas fish is capable of showing quite decent resistance when playing on a spinning rod or a fishing rod.
The appearance of this fish in the Black Sea is the result of an experiment forty years ago. Then the employees of the Odessa Research Institute quite successfully carried out the acclimatization of the bearing in two seas at once - in the Black and Azov.
The reluctance to be satisfied with the mullet was understandable: the pelengas is much larger, able to reproduce along the coast (which facilitates fishing), resistant to temperature fluctuations, unpretentious in relation to nutrition. Another goal was to improve the climate of the seas - the pelengas was supposed to become a kind of cleaner that would collect organic residues accumulating at the bottom. A few years after the experiment (early 90s), the pelengas fish became a “commercial species”.
Today, according to the data provided by ichthyologists, the pelengas began to spread in the waters of the Mediterranean.
Pelengas fish is the real queen of Black Sea dishes. It is suitable for preparing a variety of first courses, and for frying, and for baking, and for stuffing.
