Plan to Drill on Colorado Plateau Meets Resistance

Natural Gas Drilling in Roan Valley, Colorado

“As it lays plans to exploit the Roan Plateau, the Bill Barrett Corporation is promising sensitivity to the area’s wild character. The company acquired its drilling rights last year after buying a 90 percent stake in the leases from Vantage Energy, which won them at a federal auction last August. (That auction netted nearly $114 million, a record for a lower-48 onshore lease.) The company has told investors that if it is allowed to develop the plateau, it may drill as many as 3,200 wells. But Mr. Zavadil said the company would diligently avoid trout streams and minimize other disruptions by using advanced techniques to pack dozens of wells together. The company has also pledged to develop only portions of the plateau at a time, and to put up money to improve wildlife habitats.”

Target Acquisition (Does Hot Thread for Heads, Thread Wraps or Hot Beads Matter?)

DO WE USE RED ENOUGH? REMEMBER WHEN EVERYTHING WAS RED? Course that was when you bought your flies at a hardware store: the Royal Coachman, Red tail Yellow Woolly Worm, the Red tail Joe’s Hopper. Red was so there on spoons, lures, eggs, flies…..

Bloody Mary Nymph (SwittersB)

Filoplume Wet Fly (Don’t throw that fluffy stuff away)

The above fly is the standard wet fly imitation. Sometimes, depending upon what is being imitated (mayfly or caddis) there is a tail. Above, of note, is the peacock herl thorax. Note how it pushes outward the barbs of the wound hen hackle. Theoretically, this allows the feather to pulse away from the sides of the body suggesting life. I can’t swear to this, but is make sense.

Now, below is a similarly purposed fly with tail and a wing. What I like about this fly (suitable for streams or stillwaters) is the filoplume material at the base of the quill. This portion is often discarded after plucking away the top portion to wrap a wing (like the above fly’s wing).

It is fascinating to look at this fly and see what was not evident with the naked eye….the wire ribbing was snipped off flush (so I thought). There it is…protruding from beneath the thread head. It won’t hurt the effectiveness of the fly or its durability…but aesthetically that is quite unsettling to some. Maybe I need to wear those big goggles to better focus on minute details.

So, you see the filoplume feathers tied in for the tail and wing on this size 14 hook. It is like miniature marabou and a wonderful material to utilize in tails and wings on small flies ( a great tail on a truly mini-bugger). Below is a portion of a hen saddle hackle.

This is the individual feather.

The top is usually used for a wing

and the bottom portion once plucked

away discarded. Use the fluffy barbs at

the base of the feather for tails & wings.

To the right is a pinch of plumes from the

feather on the left.

Bouncer Flies (Underslung Bead Belly’s)

Tip from SwittersB visitor Maureen Clancy re BOUNCER FLIES. This always looks like a novel idea, but I have not actively pursued this. Have any of you for river flies?

Simon Grahams Bouncer Tutorial