Bill, they do not live in saltwater but will go into moderately brackish waters. I believe YP need almost completely freshwater to spawn. Hence their larger migratory runs out of the brackish lower river waters up to near the fall line where the waters are pure freshwater. Plus, in these areas the habitat is better suited to survival of their eggs and act as a better nursery for their YOY.

I have caught many migratory coastal YP from different rivers in the Chesapeake Bay. They're found in all the major eastern rivers down into South Carolina. I don't think they get any larger than landlocked YP. From having gutted a number of coastal YP at different times of year, they seem to feed very heavily on grass shrimp and scuds, both of which are very common in the coastal waters. They also have good numbers of fish prey in their stomachs. When I can ID the species, they are usually spottail shiners, silvery minnows and juvenile river herring.

They do survive just fine in inland ponds. Almost any reservoir in our area has YP in it and not from a stocking program. Mostly from either native YP being trapped above the dam or anglers catching these coastal YP and bucket stocking them into the reservoir. Kenc has a large, 12+ acre pond that sometimes gets flood waters from the Mattaponi River into it. If it is during the early spring when the YP are making their spawning runs, he'll end up with large numbers of large YP in his pond. These YP do fine, however because of the healthy LMB population in his pond the YP probably aren't reproducing successfully. If there was weed cover and less large LMB in his pond, I see no reason why he wouldn't have a reproducing YP population of "coastal YP" genetics. The biggest limiting factor for YP in our area is even though they are genetically adapted to warmer waters, the larger perch still are affected by extremely high temps.