By now nearly everyone has seen fishing gear reports on waders. Most of which are pre-empted by the delivery of said waders that get worn for ten days and written about…As with many testimonials they lack brutal honesty, but delivered with great writing…

I on the other hand will give it to you straight with nothing but experience with the product ,,,roughly delivered with 9th grade writing skills..

Waders are the anglers armour, once they are on the anglers is immune to the hazards of battling the elements. Many people transform mentally and socially once they dawn a pair ready to do battle with the elements. They offer us better enjoyment from our well deserved fishing time. Good rain gear can literally make or break a NW fishing trip we will venture out in the worst conditions and prevail with confidence when we have a good outer shell.

Three years ago my good friend Eric Neufeld suggested that I buck up and try the G4 zip up waders.  I begrudgedly jumped into my 39th pair of waders and my 6th pair from Simms thinking the zipper will be cool for a few weeks. Naturally my futile complaining that waders have not been any good since the first pair of Simms guide model Gore Tex did not phase Mr. Neufeld.

I now have 3 steelhead seasons and 2 Montana trout seasons inside these babies, an accumulation of 210+ days on the Olympic Peninsula 135 days on the Methow/Klickitat rivers and a solid 75 days in Montana and Washington trout streams for a total of 420 days guiding and fishing and some good hunting in there too…Here in Washington we have the largest variety of conditions known by wader wearing anglers, from devils club and dog hair on the OP with the occasional rain (about 12 feet a year) to super cold water requiring deep wades and a LOT of seat time, rowing, mixed with the steelhead run down, this puts a lot of test time to the armour.

As we say a picture says a 1000 words. What I can say is they did finally start leaking this April ( arrant spey cast by a guest) but not really bad enough to require anything but a dry out every couple days, I will still use them through this spring. The seams are very worn on the legs and the feet but they don’t leak which is the idea right…I am rather disappointed about the ONE little zipper that has failed, “Dam you SIMMS”