Alright...so we took our 3 hour drive to Schoharie Creek, Fox Creek, and an "I don't know creek". First off it started horrible because we left later than I wanted....half way there my wife and mother had to pee. Thats annoying....ill say this out of the whole trip including dinner they went pee 5x. I went 1x...and that was when we got home. HOLD IT LADIES!!! So we finally get to walmart in Schenectady.....45 min for 3 licenses. I;m not joking. we waited 25 min for someone to get to the desk after asking 3 associates and me going on the loud speaker to say "an associate to sporting goods please"...although i will say my last public address over the PA was just "SPORTING GOODS". After we left their we headed to the first creek. Schorarie. It was still very high. And with my knowledge of the parking area being flooded the week before made me a moron because i decided to drive my fathers trailblazer right into the muddy lot. We got stuck and it took about 20 minutes to get us out of that. It dropped half way from last week when keepnatives,firstchaos and I went but still was unaccessible. Although Cobleskill creek which drains into it was very low. Last week we couldn't even get into that. In there we caught about 3 fantails and some longnose dace. So far I was very upset because I knew this was their first "real time" out and this spot was suppose to produce us some logperch and greensides as well as countless species of shiners. So leaving this area with nothing I was confident that fox creek would be to high as well and that would of been my last hope for the darters that they wanted to see. At last we get to the fox creek and it didn't look bad. the spot we normally fish was flowing much to fast but we did find a spot that was calmer with riffles! Must I say I was finally excited. We caught 30 or so rainbow darters, 5 greensides including a HUGE MALE and fantails. I don;t remember catching all 3 species within 10 yards of each other in fox creek. Mike will have to chime in with that one. But the huge male greenside was a show stopper. I was even over excited and I've seen them that big before. The last place we went was the unknown creek. Here i was hoping to grab a school of red side dace...Not the case...and mike the water was low and you could see the bottom...and the place just had NO fish. This place was usually a mother-load of a bunch of shiners and suckers. we caught 1 blacknose dace and 1 common shiner. I couldn't spot any fish....now one spot they could have been i couldn't get to because no one would go above their waist. Oh well. all in all a good day....except for my wife who had to watch our 3 year old all day. we then went to eat in Albany and headed home!

here are some pics...can anyone ID the skeleton? I will grab some pics of the fish we kept...which was only 5 fish.

The skeleton could likely be a deer, it's the most common mammalian skeletal remains we see along creeks. And female mammals have smaller urinary bladders than males, so...

Congradulations on the good trip and all the nice darters.

I wish I went with you, but I thought it'd be rude intruding on a family trip.

I tried fishing instead and caught nothing, set a minnow trap, lost half of another minnow trap (it fell into the water and the current took it away), but saw alot of wildlife (a beaver, 2 common mergansers, and a hooded merganser). I had fun but so far no fish.

I wish the Connecticut and the lower most parts of the Ashuelot river didn't have that awkward ledge and "dirt cliff steps" bank contruction over much of its length. It makes it tough to get to places which are not developed or otherwise made accessible on many parts of it. Not sure why it is like this, but something tells me that with every other geographic nuisance around here the answer would be to blame a glacier.

Yeah, us girls has smaller bladders than you guys. We don't like it either. I don't know about your family, but if I'm going someplace with no bathroom, I go every time I get near one. It's a hassle. I can't stand up and pee in the bushes, either.

I keep looking at the stream pictures, thinking something is odd about the stream banks. It looks like riprap along one bank, which is mobilized into the stream, with fresh stumps on another stretch of bank?. And everything looks well-scoured which would be consistent with recent rains. I'd guess there's an interesting history to this creek with people trying keep it in a channel, which the creek has probably never done. I also wonder if there's a lot of poorly managed land upstream so that runoff from rain and snow can be very fast and destructive. This is all handwaving, of course.