wader suggestions

[kevin smith]

need a pair of waders for river/stream fly fishing can anyone suggest something around 100-130 bucks that will hold up to a couple seasons until i can afford some simms or cloudviels

thanks
kevin

[David Noll]

Cabela's has some lightweight waist and chest waders which you can probably get for $125-$145.

[chris towles]

if you are looking for something for stream fishing and not backpacking where weight isnt such an issue you would do well with the aformentioned suggestion of the cabelas..it will be hard to beat the quality at that pricepoint.

for backpacking however, one thing i have noticed is that there is a lack of true lightweight packable waders on the market. i checked out the dan baileys lightweights at the suggestion of some here on the forum and found them to be heavy and bulky. my plan for this year is to use my kayaking bibs with some neoprene socks. the bibs that i have are made by navarro and are called the mystery bib/dry pant. they are made of a lightwieght 2.5 layer entrant fabric and have latex ankle gaskets. i don't have a scale to weigh them, but they are slightly heavier than my patagonia jetstream jacket so i am guessing a little over a pound. in 4 years of kayaking i have never been wet in these which is amasing because every other pant i have owned have left me soaked. the nice thing about these for backpacking is that they don't have attached socks so they will easily double as a bombproof set of rain pants without having to finagle bulky neoprene socks into your boots. i still have yet to use these out on the trail as waders, but my past experiance with them boating leads me to believe they will work fine. most of my wading in the backcountry tends to be stream crossings or wading out to rocks to stand on to get closer to feeding fishing and to get brush out of my backcast, so i think these should work just fine.

[Craig]

Probably in Australia and New Zealand. If you only plan to fish lakes, with no scrub and bush on sides, then the lighter options would work fine. But don't try this on rivers in Australia or New Zealand.

The black berries and scrub in Oz, or the just as horrible spiky (gorse?) bushes and scrub in NZ, will rip light gear to shreds in seconds (including U/light nylon tops and pertex windshirts!). If the weather is such that waders are needed in these countries, you would be advised to use durable (and, unfortunately, heavy) multi layer (5-7) goretex or equivalent waders, or you'll be very disappointed very quickly.

The only time I could see that you could get away with less in these countries would be fishing lakes and staying on water's edge. If fishing the open streams in Alpine country, you don't need to be wading, so don't waders in the first place.

BTW, this is why I still use a packlite goretex jacket (shock) at 450g (17oz), because I can still stalk in the gorse and scrub on the river side and not end up wearing tatters.

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