Park lake Pleco!

[yellowcat]

Near my house in So.Cal is a suburban lake fed by a water reclamation treatment plant, part of the process is that the water released into the lake is heated and stays warm year round. Aside from the usual array of domestic species, there exists a large population of overgrown H. Plecostomus that naturally reproduce there. At times when the water is clear you can see giant specimens in the shallow bottom along the shoreline that exceed 2' long. Surprising to me is that they regularly surface for a gulp of air, something I never noticed with my aquarium placo's, past or present. Anyway last week whilst angling with artificial lures for largemouth bass I had this one attack the lure I was reeling in! It was 19" long and guessing it weighed around 4 lbs. or so. After the photo I released it back into it's murky environs...

[bekateen]

Very nice specimen yellowcat! (As an aside, that's not

Hypostomus plecostomus

; it's one of the

Pterygoplichthys

species, probably P. pardalis or P. disjunctivus (or a hybrid).

Keep up the fishing!
Eric

[yellowcat]

Thanks Eric for narrowing down the possible species, to my eye it most closely resembles P. Pardalis based on it's skin patterns.

Also likely is a hybrid of many species under the heading of 'common pleco's' similar looking but with differences as to dorsal fin sizes, etc. I once talked to a man there who was angling for small ones in the outflow creek who catches them for his daughters pond who stated he's found 6 different species there? One thing I quickly learned is that they don't call them armoured catfish for nothin', not to be grasped with bare hands, skin texture somewhere between a pineapple or a cactus wrapped in barbed wire!

[characinkid]

Im really interested in the fact that it was caught on an artificial lure and that it would attack that. Not something that I would ever have imagined they would do.

[yellowcat]

The lake has an abundance of 2-3" silverside minnows, some folks use them live or dead, along with worms and carp baits and rarely will catch pleco's. Seemingly omnivorous common pleco's may be pisciverious as well, the lure I was using resembles the silversides...

[Viktor Jarikov]

Great story! I call them Armageddon fish.

[edds]

Im really interested in the fact that it was caught on an artificial lure and that it would attack that. Not something that I would ever have imagined they would do.

Quite often fish will attack a lure as a territorial response, not just for feeding which could be the case here.