So I finally got over for three straight days, Friday, June 7 to this morning.
Pleased to report that the anti-mouse measures taken in the fall were successful.
My true home stream, Woodland Valley Creek, was running nice and cold. Parts are considerably more squirrelly than in years past, and the stream continued its relentless push to get back closer to the road after considerable disruption in the flood of 2011.
Fished Esopus at Herdman Road, between the two Phoenicia bridges, and below Five Arches. The new access at the latter is very nice, and following the road on foot you pop out where they are building a new bridge for this rail trail thing. There is some serious pocket water here. I caught some decent fish and someone's net, which I left out in case they come back looking for it.
Downstream there were a lot of big stonefly and iso shucks. My Esopus standby, the Leadwing Coachman, produced, as did Stimulators.
But the champion pattern was a big (size 12) parachute Adams. No idea why but fish were elbowing each other out of the way to take a whack at it. (If they had elbows, I mean.)
The Pantherkill, which runs through a chunk of my land, was its usual super secret squirrelly self. The flood left approximately 80 bazillion trees down over the tiny brook, which is hugely irritating from a fishing perspective and wonderful from a habitat point of view, as the water stays cool and the brookies have lots of places to hide from predators and eat stuff that falls off the trees.
The bears seem to have given up on using my driveway and adjacent gully as a thoroughfare, probably due to my bearcrow (two defunct wading staffs lashed together with aluminum pie pans for hands and head, plus some empty soda cans tied on for rattling purposes).
I've got a full week coming up starting June 19.