While some people refer strictly to bluegill when using the word bream, other panfish like redbreast, shellcracker, pumpkinseed and warmouth are all members of the bream family. A lesser-known member is the flier, aka fly-bream.
The flier is distinguished from other bream by the size of its anal fin, which is almost the identical size of the dorsal fin. This characteristic gives the fish a circular shape and often leads to its misidentification as a small crappie. Anglers also commonly mistake this fish as a bream-crappie hybrid or a bluegill-shellcracker hybrid, but the flier is a separate species itself.
Fliers don’t get nearly as big as other bream species, but they are still fine table fare, and the biggest fliers in the Combahee are typically no bigger than 7 inches long. They do surprise anglers with their thickness, which often adds to the odd-looking shape of the fish.
While very common on the Combahee River, fliers don’t live in most bodies of water in South Carolina. Like the redbreast, they need running water, and the blacker the water, the better they survive. They are spunky fish, especially on ultralight tackle, and anglers who hook one are often surprised to see the small size once they land the fish.
With a typical diet of insects, fliers are most often caught on live crickets and are often caught near the surface in deep holes near weed patches or around submerged cypress trees. Often, fishermen who catch a flier on a cricket under a cork will remove the split shot from his line so that the cricket floats and attempts to walk on water. The resulting topwater action by the fliers is as exciting as buzzbait fishing for largemouth bass.
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