I'm in Del Rio,(TX) and we're infested to the gills with common plecos. There is a college teacher here that was in the newspaper because he's harvesting them from the creek to do studies on them (dissect them, and whatnot) I guess to try to get a handle on how they are affecting our local species, and anyway, the teacher said when being interviewed for the paper, that if the species is not native, it's legal for you to collect it without a liscense. I don't know if that's allowed anywhere in TX, or just here, or not legal anymore, because the articles were like at least a year ago, I think....
A lot of places do that. Plecos are a huge problem in a lot of places because they're way hardy and decimate the local populations of fish. They eat too much.