River Safety

[wjorg]

I have a buddy I fish with. I wont let him take his PFD off. If he does, we dont catch fish. Ever since the first time we fished....

I have another buddy who needs a PFD, he did a cartwheel(spectacular loss of balance!) in the Truckee and floated down three runs till we caught up with him and grabbed him from shore....needless to say I tried to give him Simms "Wading Safely" Video for Christmas....

[Hairstacker]

Kurt, the one I pictured is manual, so it will not automatically deploy even when wet. With that said, I don't know if it's intended to be soaked as a matter of course. In any case, it is made by Stearns and I bought it online at Bass Pro Shops.

I bought the headlamp at Bass Pro Shops at the same time (I was given a gift card). It is made by Streamlight and actually has 3 lighting modes (long and short-distance white modes in addition to green), rotates up and down with positive stops, and runs on 3 AAA batteries. Even if you don't fish with it on, it is darn handy for paddling your way back to the car and scrambling up a levee in the dark with your hands full:

[wjorg]

REI has a multitude of Headlamps. Best part is their "IF it doesnt meet your high standards guarentee."

I used to work there, not a fan of guarentee abuse, but some headlamps are nockoff faulty jokes. REI sells good models and backs their stuff off.

Not knocking the bas pro shops at all. What I like about REI is you can try them on in the store(no Bass Pro Shops in my neck of the woods) with your favorite fishing hat if you like....

[Hairstacker]

REI has a multitude of Headlamps. Best part is their "IF it doesnt meet your high standards guarentee."

Walter, good to know.

I have had very good experiences buying stuff at REI. The tent my wife and I bought there about 15 years ago was (and still is) absolute top quality in my opinion.

[Hairstacker]

I have another buddy who needs a PFD, he did a cartwheel(spectacular loss of balance!) in the Truckee

That's another one that should have been caught on video.

Speaking of which, I think it's only appropriate that I resurrect this video at this time:

http://www.bofunk.com/video/2955/fishing_bloopers.html