Group,

I'm wondering how much life the rest of the surf-zone fly fishing world gets out of breathable waders that spend most of their time in the salt. Somehow, the three seasons I get out of mine doesn't seem meet the definition of durability.

The question is a two-part thing: 1) How many seasons can you fish your breathables in the salt; and 2) What do you do to make 'em live that long!

-JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

Jerrold:

I have not done too well with breathables. I typically get about 6 months of use and then things start leaking. My current Goretex waders developed a bootie seam leak after 2 months. The Goretex itself seems OK, so far.

I often put in 2-3 miles of walking on the beach every time I fish. That comes out at about 100- 150 miles every 6 months. Perhaps that is more walking than the designers anticipated?

Rob

_________________
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

RK,

I seemed to get a lot more life out of my neoprene waders than I with breatheables. I think you might be on to something re: walking being more than the makers anticipated. If you're going to be successful in the surf, you can't get married to real estate.

I guess I shouldn't be complaining, because I seem to be having better success with breathables than you are!

BTW, what do you clean yours with?

-JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

Folks--

You could also consider following me down the el-cheapo, power-to-the people, proletarian path and go with Cabela’s Roaring Forks 420-dernier, PVC-coated nylon stockingfoot waders, which now (unlike my old pair) have neoprene booties: $49.94. Add a tube on Aquaseal and a jar of Cotol accelerant, because, even though Cabela’s will stand behind their stuff forever, eventually these babies will leak. But so what? If you get anything close to the same wear cycle as either Rob and JP do out of them, you’ll save a heap of dough. Likewise in spades if you don’t get to fish as much as JP and Rob. In the California surf, you don’t need a whole lot of insulation, just something to keep the water off, and I can tell you from experience that the occasional leak in the foot just leads to a “wetsuit” effect in the feet and can be repaired easily. I’m not sure how much breathability there is in the long run in breathable waders worn in the salt, anyway, and it’s not as if you’re going to spend twelve hours straight in them, hiking over boulders.

--Bud

_________________
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. And inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
--Marx (Groucho)

Bud:

I was actually thinking along the same lines. El Cheapo in the surf may well be the best way to go. I could buy 5- 10 cheapo's for each pair of breathables. The moisture dissipation issue may not be that important-especially in the early hours of the day.

JP: About every 3 trips, I wash my waders with a light solution of Woolite. Otherwise, they just get a good hosing and are hung up to dry before placing back in my fishing closet.


What do you guys do for footwear? I just don't like wearing bootfoots for long slogs across the sand. I started using surfer's booties in the 80's and nowadays I use proper neoprene fishing booties from various companies.
The comfort provided by these booties makes hiking and running
(for busting stripers) across the beach much easier.

_________________
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

RK,

I wear "aquasocks" -the slip-on neoprene shoes that surfers, jet-ski pilots and other watersports enthusiasts wear. The ones that I use are marketed by Speedo, and sell for under ten bucks at most big-box sporting goods retailers in my area. They conform tightly to the foot, which prevents sand from getting between them and stockingfoot of the waders. Because they are a shoe, rather than a boot, I can still swim with them on -nice for those occasions when I let the common desire for maximum fish contact override common sense and wade out too deep.

-JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

You're swimming in waders, JP? Doesn't sound wise....

Richard,

Do I swim in my waders? Well, uh, no, not on purpose... One of the realities of surf fishing, if you do it often enough, is that the surf will knock you down on your butt when you least expect it. It isn't a question of whether or not, but one of when. If that should happen in the middle of winter at the South Huntington State Beach, where rip currents abound, then you have two basic choices: either lay back and let the the rip take you to Japan, or swim across the rip and parallel to the beach and then perpendicular to it and back to shore. It's tough enough to swim with waders on, and for me, it's even tougher if I'm wearing boots.

Yeah, swimming in waders isn't wise if the purpose of the swimming is to get you to a spot, but it makes a heck of a lot of sense if the purpose is to get you OUT of one alive. So while I don't plan on swimming when I'm fishing the surf, I do plan on being able to do so, should the need arise. That's why I wear the auquasocks instead of boots or booties. That's why I always wear a separate wader belt and don't rely on my stripping basket belt to perform double-duty. It's why my homemade stripping basket has it's clip-ended waist strap attached to carabiners that then attach to holes in the lip of the basket -so that I can divoroce myself from the thing in a big hurry, and have more than one way to do it. It's why I wear "Sospenders" -an inflateable PFD- when I fish and why I try to avoid fly fishing in the surf alone.

I am NOT swimming in waders on purpose. That's so far beyond stupid that I can't think of a word to do the act justice. That said, it's just as stupid to go off fishing the surf being totally unprepared to swim if you have to, without thinking about what you'll do if you get knocked down by a rogue wave, or if you trip beacuse you've got your legs wrapped up in a wad of kelp, or whatever, and without having an advance plan to get you back on the beach if you happen to fall down and get carried out to sea by a rip. Fishing is fun, but it isn't worth dying over.

I certainly didn't want to give the impression that I'd swim off the beach while wearing waders just to get to an offshore sandbar or anything like that. In retrospect, I could have worded my prior post much better. But if I said that I have never waded in the surf in water deeper than my kneecaps, I'd be lying. I certainly don't like wading in water deeper than that, and I don't do it on purpose. I have, however, gotten so focused on the fish that I was catching that I wasn't focused on shuffling my feet when I move about, and I have wound up in waist high water because of that. If you get knocked on your butt in waist deep water, you'll be swimming before you're standing.

-JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

Granted, no one in waders swims willingly, but it's important to note what the surf-zone angler can do to try and improve his or her survival, which is this: 1) Wear a non-stretch wading belt tightly cinched around the waist. Stretchable belts will -- you guessed it -- expand as the waders fill with water; non-stretch belts will not expand and will thus slow the shipping of water. And, 2) wear a light jacket or parka, preferably with a cinchable waist, over the waders. SOSpenders are also a wise idea, obviously, and any surf-zone angler who doesn't have 'em is taking a risk.

Speaking of waders, Mr. Shelton, you might want to speak on whether one needs 'em in SoCal. We HAVE to 'em up north, of course, but you're down there in the land of Beach Blanket Babylon -- do you really need to suit up, so to speak, to fish the beaches of the Southland?

Jeff,

As to your question abouth whether or not one really needs waders to fly fish the Southern California surf, that answer is a yes, in my view.

Even down here, the surfers who are out doing their thing bright and early in the morning wear wetsuits pretty much year 'round, and probably for the same reason that I'm wearing my waders. You can get pretty cold without them, even here in sunny Southern California, and even in the summertime. Now, if I were fishing the beach in the middle of an 80+ degree summer day, I might be inclined to do without waders. Down here, fly fishing in the surf is pretty much an early morning or twilight game, so I don't do a lot of fishing in the middle of the day. Even in the summer, mornings are still cold along the coast. I don't enjoy being cold, wet, and miserable unless I happen to be steelhead fishing or duck hunting, and even then, the action better be good enough to encourage me to play through the pain.

Another consideration for me is that here in Orange County, many of our beaches are prone to bacteria contamination, and that's incentive enough for me to want to keep body contact to a minimum -hence the waders. I might look like a dork, and I really don't care. At least I won't have rashes developing where most males would rather not have a rash develop.

-JP

PS: Your bit about not using stretchable wader belts was spot-on. I can think of few things concieved by the mind of humankind that are more utterly worthless.

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

I know this is a pretty late post for this thread. I have very limited fly fishing in the surf experience but aren;t you in only anout knee high water when you fish. Most of the fish I've caught in the surf are in about knee high water. So why would you get caught up in a rip current or have wave knock you down?

In the Northern california surf, I've been knocked on my butt by surf at my ankles--like being submarined by a defensive lineman. And knee-high surf can be chest-high in an instant. The surf is simply not a predictable environment.

--Bud

_________________
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. And inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
--Marx (Groucho)