Pelamida (Sarda) is a predator fish that lives in schools in the seas and oceans. Pelamida - fish (photo below), belonging to the Mackerel family. It has 4 main subspecies. On the tables of Russian buyers usually gets the Atlantic bonito. Its habitat, as a rule, is located on the oceanic shores of the Atlantic, but its distribution reaches even the farthest latitudes in the north of Great Britain and Norway. In addition, the Atlantic sard lives in the Black Sea.
Atlantic predator
It has already been mentioned that bonito is a predatory fish. Its usual menus are anchovy and sardine, mackerel, horse mackerel and other not too large inhabitants of the waters. By the way, bonito is a phenomenally gluttonous fish. In the esophagus of a caught individual, it is quite possible to sometimes find up to 70 anchovies or other food.
Usually this fish grows up to half a meter (or a little more), an adult can weigh up to 4 kg. Although sometimes there are specimens up to 85 cm and weighing up to 7 kg.
Tastes good!
Pelamida is a fish famous for its excellent taste. By late autumn, individuals of this species usually accumulate a lot of fat (more than 10% of their own weight), and therefore meat bonito is soft and fatty. Traditionally, in recipes, fish undergoes conservation, smoking. Chilean bonito is especially quoted in world culinary cuisine - fish with pleasant, slightly sweet meat, which has a slightly specific taste. However, you should know that if you want a qualified cook you can always protect yourself from him with various culinary methods.
Meet: Black Sea fish. Bonito
This marine inhabitant comes to warm waters every year in the Black Sea for feeding and spawns there. In its appearance, it is a bit similar to tuna. The body shape of a fish can resemble a proportionally reduced tuna and, like it, is able to swim for a long time and quickly. The back of the bonito in dark oblique strokes, slightly bluish, and the sides and abdomen are quite light.
Previously, bonito was quite common in the Black Sea. She prefers to look for food in the surface water column, where she feeds on small fish. And its spawning takes place in the summer in shallow water near the coast. “Youth”, hatching from floating eggs, grows unusually nimbly, gaining half a kilogram of weight by the third month of life.
But the bonito is wintering in the Sea of Marmara, because it is very thermophilic. The next season in the Black Sea shoals come largely thinned, and in some years it happens that the capture of bonito becomes a success.
Fishing
What to fish for? Pelamida is an extremely interesting fish for fishing. Not all amateur fishermen in the Black Sea can catch a sufficiently large individual (no more than a pound, usually less). But despite all of the above, this also has its advantages. You can catch a lot of small fish, and this fishing on the bonito is extremely entertaining.
What do you need to know? Pelamida is a fish of the open sea. It is well caught, for example, from a breakwater or longboat. True, there are times from time to time when flocks of small pelamid fishes enter the bays, and then they frantically grab any food, including the nozzle offered by the fishermen, which is visible on the surface itself or at very great depths. But usually the flocks for a long time inside the lagoons do not linger and go back to more open spaces.
Pelamide feeding all day, she eats many times. Sometimes everything is enough for a fish: crumpled bread, dough, shrimp, and generally any nozzle or bait caught on a hook. Grabbing the prey, the bonito does not drag it to the depth, but flounders and spins in the upper layer of water, making attempts to get off the hook, and, it should be noted, it often succeeds. It is impossible to confuse such a bite: a not-so-large, sharply spinning propeller, cast in silver, forms on the water. Often then there is no way to unravel the leashes, and you have to cut and tie others. Sometimes a bonito repeatedly twists the fishing line to the point that it cannot stand and breaks. Then the fish leaves with a hook and a piece, leaving the fisherman. The most common tackle on the bonito among fishermen: cork, tyrant, track, universal rod, sometimes spinning.
Pelamide (fish): useful properties
Pelamide, according to nutritionists and culinary experts, has a unique composition of meat, which is provided due to the rich content in it of many substances necessary for the human body: trace elements, minerals, vitamins. There are antioxidants in it, and those substances that are directly involved in the transport of oxygen stimulate the formation of red blood bodies. It is even believed that the regular consumption of meat of this fish can improve the condition and performance of the brain, spinal cord and brain. That is why bonito meat is recommended to be included in the daily diet of children, pregnant women, the elderly. The animal protein contained in meat is easily and quickly absorbed without causing gastrointestinal problems. And fish oil, abundantly contained in bonito, is known to have a comprehensive beneficial effect on the entire human body.
Contraindications to eating
However, it should be remembered that such a fatty meal (and fat in a bonito, as we recall, more than 10% of body weight) is harmful to people suffering from heart disease and diseases of blood vessels, liver, kidneys. So for them, in the culinary plan, it would be better to cook boiled bonito, or even abandon its use in food.