One small thing to try is the "skimmer socks" that were in another recent thread. These are fine mesh bags that fit inside of your skimmer basket. They really do pick up a LOT of stuff, including very fine stuff. We have a combination of high pollen and dandelion/cottonwood tree fluff here and the socks work great at keeping almost all of it out of the filter.

I keep several sets of these on hand, each time I empty the skimmer, I replace the sock with a cleaned/dry one and wash and hang out the old one. Keeps the labor pretty low and really does seem to significantly extend time between backflushing (with a DE filter).