HPA Chest Pack back in stock in the UK - I’m essentially tied to carrying my lures like this, it’s the best side-bag I can find

Different strokes for different folks and all that, because when we go lure fishing we can carry our lures in a bunch of different ways. I am always carrying at least some professional camera gear plus various bits and pieces - waterproof jacket or smock, sun protection stuff, water bottle, hooks, leader etc. - so I need to use some sort of rucksack and I see no point in it not being of the waterproof variety. I will obviously put the rucksack down somewhere while I do the actual fishing, but of course it means that I can’t use something like a sling-bag to carry my lures - I don’t really like them anyway - and I have no interest in storing the lures I have chosen for a particular session in my rucksack and then having to go back to the rucksack every time I want to change a lure………………

So I am essentially tied to carrying my one or two washable lure boxes in some sort of “bag” which sits at my side. If it sits at my side it doesn’t get in the way when I am walking and scrambling with my rucksack on my back, then over time I got so used to my lure box or boxes sitting in a side-bag on my left side that I can’t really do it any other way now. When I want to change a lure I naturally turn the top half of my body around a bit to access the side-bag sitting around my waist/hips.

And I have tried a good number of different side-style lure bags out, including a really good Savage Gear sample we were working on for a while but which hasn’t gone any further. Hence me going back to this HPA Chest Pack - yep, I know, it’s the wrong name for a bag which sits at your side - which like that Savage Gear sample, I always use with the Simms neoprene belt (I don’t much like the basic belt that comes with this HPA Chest Pack). I also always “wear” it with a shoulder strap, and for me that’s an old camera strap which has been on a few HPA Chest Packs over the years.

There is no point me banging on here anymore when you can read all my thoughts on this HPA Chest Pack from an older blog post here. It’s still the same lure bag as back then, but now the Art of Fishing are bringing some of the HPA (France) products into the UK and distributing them, they are finally available to buy again. Having tried a few different bags I still come back to this HPA one because it works so well for me, and although in an ideal world I’d like to make a few small improvements, I reckon it’s really good value for money for how much I use it and how long I know I will get out of it.

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