You are supposed to kill them and pull the gills and guts out of them.

Calavares is not the only place loaded with them, a few weeks ago on a bait run to Lake Dunlap, I ended up with 5 in the net in one throw. A mess to untangle from a 7 foot net.

KILL

Just saw an article today on yahoo.

Headline reads "...wreaking havoc".

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/armored-catfish-wreaking-havoc-south-florida-lakes-182812663.html;_ylt=ApZP.ff6mbu0q3SboYx7BtGs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNtc28zcGFuBG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBGUARwa2cDMGFhYTRjOGQtODBhMS0zNTAxLTk0MTktNzhiZDQzZDJhMjlkBHBvcwMxNgRzZWMDdG9wX3N0b3J5BHZlcgNiYjgyN2U4Mi04ZDdmLTExZTEtOWI3Zi1mNjViNzU5MzdhMzI-;_ylg=X3oDMTFrM25vcXFyBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAMEcHQDc2VjdGlvbnMEdGVzdAM-;_ylv=3

I was thinking the same thing fatback looks very similar to the armored catfish and pretty sure this is what it is.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-invasive1020100507195701,0,7759518.photo

Non-native and invasive species are two different things. Non-native are stocked and heavily managed species. Invasive are just that, invasive and must be eliminated on site. They will do much harm to the lake if numbers climb.

they are ecosystem destroyers! kill them! or keep as an aquarium pet. They eat all the vegetation and algae in the water

Fished Falcon last friday and saw three of them. Each on a seperate tree sucking algae. Dont know what kind of damage they could do but they seem harmless enough. Maybe an over population of them would be bad.

They just eat the algae.

But their overpopulation (since they have no predators) can actually cause shoreline erosion, which is already happening in Florida.

So you have to either:

- Take it home (good luck trying to fillet)
- Gut it, and throw it back to die.

comal river has some HUGE ones

They are OK to eat. Just don't bother cleaning them. Keep them alive in a bucket for a day or so so their guts empty out, then just boil them alive.

There are many different species of these things in South America, but I have only seen one species here which come from the pet store.