Week of May 19, 2025

Monday I cleaned and sorted through the Shopsmith parts I picked up from the estate sale two weeks ago. I found the right combination of parts to finally have a safe table saw setup and use a standard 5/8″ arbor instead of the Shopsmith 1″ arbor. I am pretty stoked about that! I also hung the accessory shelf on a cleat. the Shopsmith corner is coming along nicely.

Tuesday I went fly fishing on the upper west branch of the Croton River. This time I worked my way upstream. This section of the Croton River is a wild quality brown trout stream, so it is unstocked. I caught 15 wild browns, a couple in a big pool and most in pocket water. Elk Hair Caddis and Olive Bubble Kebari were the two standout flies. I caught 9 bluegill in the big pool, too. The bluegill wouldn’t take a dry fly, but they absolutely loved the subsurface olive bubble kebari.

When the wind blew there were rises like crazy in one of the big pools. Took me a few times to figure it out, but little green inchworms and spongy moth caterpillars were falling out of the trees! I had to tie some of these up to try again there next week.

I saw this excellent tree, where I imagine the neighborhood scholarly owl lives.

Wednesday I explored the streams over in Harriman State Park, which were beautiful, high gradient pocket water streams. Unfortunately I didn’t get a single take or even see a fish that I’d spooked on either of the streams I fished. The water was fairly warm for a chilly day, so I’m wondering if it just isn’t good trout habitat anymore. The most recent sampling info I found was from 2021, so it is possible the habitat is no longer viable. I’ll try again perhaps in the fall, but I’m not holding my breath. It is really too bad because the streams are gorgeous.

Thursday I went to a small going away party for the Trout in the Classroom coordinator for NYC, who is moving out to California.

Friday Charlie and I ran errands in the rain for most of the afternoon and got him a haircut, then we played at George’s Island Park after dinner. There used to be brick kilns there, and the causeway to the mainland formed over time from discarded bricks. You can still see them in the water!

Saturday we worked in the yard, cleaning up a brushpile that we’ve wanted to clean up for past last three years. Amanda did the bulk of the clean up. I helped with relocating the wood piles and logs, then I mowed and planted potatoes, and took Charlie to pick up some grass seed, which we them sowed where the brush pile used to be. We moved the logs into a climbing/jumping/hopping area for Charlie, which he climbed on immediately.

Charlie helping with the potatoes:

Sunday we had the Meg, Jeremy, Miles, Ben, and Henry over for a cookout (chicken kabobs). The kids had lots of fun on the slide and running around the backyard. That’s exactly why we wanted a big yard!

Some more fly tying: A brown bivisible and some smaller elk hair caddis using multiple hair colors for a variegated look.

We’re starting to cook from our garden: Grilled radishes, chimichurri from our parsley, cilantro on tacos. Next up will be the mint, dill, garlic scapes, and borage.

Any night it doesn’t rain we are out in the backyard.

We put up our old mailbox in Charlie’s slide fort. It is primarily monster truck storage now.