Yeast From Fruit/Isolating yeast(s)

I’m currently on a noisy train. It will take a minute before reaching its destination, the prefect time to start a thread about yeast isolating and locally gathered strains. What has worked, and what hasn’t? I made a starter from gathering sugar swiped from the skin of under ripe crab apples a mile from my house and it came out fantastic. I have yet to use it in combination with a supporting (most probably wild) strain but this is where I’m heading in regards to the kind of profile I’m looking to create. Any members eager to share previous success stories about the starters they made from fruit, decaying bark from a pine tree, etc., and give advice as to what methods were most helpful and which were more of a waste? Any one have any superior knowledge in yeast isolating? For "yeast wrangling kits" (man I love saying that), how many people use Bootleg Biology products? I’m really interested in doing it all by myself and was curious if we got some veteran wranglers who can help a dude out.

In general the pure culture isolates that I’ve gotten from environmental sources have not been great- lots of phenol production, not great attenuation, etc.

There are number of exceptions of course, but my personal experiance is that a mixture of organisms from an environmental source almost always yields a beer that I am more happy with. There are so many great isolates out there already (and ways to select for "house" character from one of those isolates) that I’m not convinced going after a primary ferm yeast from these sources is the thing for me.

With that said, lots of cool LAB and non-Sacch yeasts can be readily isolated from a whole bunch of sources. I like using LMDA/SDA agar for isolation, using wort that has been fermented to completion.