YOY Flier habitat

Does anyone have personal observations on YOY flier habitat they'd like to share? We caught a half dozen today and while it didn't totally surprise me, I wasn't expecting to find them, especially because of the number of bluegill and green sunfish also collected.

I remember catching a dozen or so a few years back in the waist deep (or more) water seining in the main channel of the Suwannee R in NC Florida. Very dark water, moving reasonably well for Florida water, no vegetation cover. Took me quite a while to figure out what they were, very attractive fish at 1" size. Don't know if that's typical, but that's where they were that day.

I have limited experience but here goes. In Southern Illinois streams, I've found less than 1" fish in still waters/protected inlets (usually along with Esox americanus and Elassoma zonatum). Often among vegetation but any sort of cover seemed to have them (leaf litter and branches). In all cases the fish were found in still water at this size and often less than 6" deep. Once the fish grew to about 1.5" to 2" I've found them away from shore but often near but not in fallen branches.

In Alabama this spring, we found quite a few in the some of the deepest water we sampled (3.5') in undercut banks. These were fish from multiple year classes including young of last year. This happened to be a deep, inside bend with little flow and about the only place we found Flier.

Thanks guys. My observation follows much more closely to Uland's first. I was at a 2nd order coastal plain stream (~ 5 m wide) in a fairly small watershed yesterday that had a beaver impoundment. The impoundment has caused a brushy floodplain to be inundated and looks like it has been for some time, maybe a couple years. The stream channel still has really firm sand and gravel, water is tannic, tons of wood, etc. We did not find any flier in the main channel, but before we left we started shocking on the ~ 6" deep floodplain and within 15 seconds I had 6, 1" flier. Wondered if it was a better refugia away from the larger centrarchids and chain pickerel because their wasn't much cover, just filamentous algae and a live tree here or there. Interestingly, no redfin pickerel, just a few chain, but many non-native sunfishes too. Anyways, just didn't expect it though we were looking for them so thanks for sharing your insights.

The previous year we found larger individuals in similar habitat in the adjacent watersehd, but in the main stream channel of the flood plain/beaver impounded streams, or in deep woody pools of streams with little to no bluegills and green sunfish.

The only place I have found young flier in numbers were in shallow weedy areas associated with sunny openings in an extensive floodplain tupelo swamp along Wolf River in southwestern TN. Adult flier were the most common centrarchids found in the deeper, shaded parts of the swamp, but no sub-3" specimens were found there. The young flier were associated with Elassoma zonatum, Etheostoma proeliare, E. fusiforme, Aphredoderus sayanus, and small numbers of juvenile Erimyzon sucetta and Lepomis marginatus; no pickerel or large centrarchids were found in shallows. This is all based on casual sampling (trapping and netting) so may not be worth much.

Sounds pretty similar to what we saw the other day with a few similar species on the shallow floodplain/backwater.