Fly Fishing Vest
Buying a fly fishing vest might not sound like a complicated endeavor, but if you haven’t ever purchased one before, it can be quite the undertaking. After all, the fly fishing vest is one of the most important pieces of equipment that you will purchase. Yes, that’s right. A fly fishing vest is not just an item of clothing. A fly fishing vest is just as important a piece of equipment as your fly rod.
There are a number of different things to take into consideration when choosing your fly fishing vest. This isn’t a piece of equipment where “the cheapest is the best.” When it comes to fly fishing vests, cheap ones are often so cheap for a reason: they aren’t any good! The vest is important because it is where you will put all of the fishing equipment you will need to have immediately handy. It is designed to hold the tools, the cleaners, the weights and so much more.
The most important part of any fly fishing vest is it’s pocket design. You will be amazed at the amount of equipment you will want to keep within arm’s reach. Of course, this doesn’t mean that a vest should simply be a bunch of pockets sewn together. While, yes, you will want to keep many little things handy, those things won’t be much good if you have to poke through seventy five pockets to get to them. Also, the more pockets you have, the more weight you will be wearing. Fly fishing can often be a sport that requires a some agility. It’s hard to be agile if you are wearing your body weight in equipment. There is a happy medium to the amount of pockets to have on your vest. After you’ve been fly fishing for a while you will come to know what you want handy and that will help you find the perfect fly fishing vest. Typically twenty pockets are so should end up being enough, but again—only you know exactly what you need.
A fly fishing vest can come in either mesh or regular fabric and there are benefits to both. A mesh vest is usually lighter and is good to wear if you fly fish during the summer. Basically the vest is just a big piece of mesh with a couple of arm holes and a couple handfuls of pockets sewn all over it. Mesh vests are usually a little bit more versatile as they can bend and twist in ways that a regular fabric vest can’t. Of course a regular fabric vest does offer you quite a bit of protection against the elements. It all just comes down to a matter of personal choice.
Above all else, you will want to make sure you are comfortable. After all, you will be wearing your fly fishing vest the entire time you are fishing. Would you really want to volunteer to be uncomfortable all day? Making sure your fly fishing vest is comfortable will make all the difference in the world.