If you have read this blog for a while now you will know why I take the whole sun protection thing very seriously, but then I used to anyway and I still got nailed. You might find it surprising to know that I have a great big flaw! My body doesn’t process exposure to the sun as well as most other people. I see far too many sunburnt anglers and there is simply no need for it, not with how much time so many of us spend outside. You don’t need me to bang on at you about the potential dangers from too much exposure to sunshine and getting sunburnt, so instead let me detail what I know about what to use and wear to effectively cover up and keep fishing……………….

Please bear in mind that I have spent a lot of time fishing and taking photos of fishing in some very hot and hostile places around the world, and I have worked around a lot of professional guides especially who spend a lot of time in these environments. I would be remarkably stupid not to learn all I can from people like this.

Don’t ask! Any exposed skin you can see is religiously covered with high-quality SPF50 waterproof sunscreen.

The most obvious thing is to use good sunscreen, but whenever possible these I will avoid putting it on because I personally find it much easier in the UK and Ireland especially to use the right clothing instead of sunscreen. You have probably guessed that I don’t give a stuff what I look like, and I find face masks etc. easier to use than sweating sunscreen off when you’re moving around a lot. Good sunscreen is obviously a far better thing than no sunscreen if you want to expose parts of your body to the sun, and if I am going to use sunscreen then I personally see no point in using anything under SPF50. When I was going to the US fairly regularly I would bulk-buy bottles of the amazing BullFrog QuikGel SPF50, but these days I use the readily available and pretty expensive Riemann P20 SPF50 spray - and just live with the shiny look it gives you! I have heard a few times now that the Altruist sunscreen is really good, but I haven’t yet tried it.

So if we start with the fact that somebody like me is either going to be wearing BCWs or the Palm neoprene kayaking leggings, I don’t need to be worrying about any sun protection for my white legs. I am also not about to start fishing topless, plus I am not generally wearing t-shirts because then I have to start thinking about sunscreen for my forearms. Ninety nine times out of a hundred I am wearing some kind of long-sleeve top for my fishing and indeed guiding and photography etc. In the winter I will often wear an Under Armour Cold Gear thermal compression top under that main long-sleeve top, and then whatever waterproof gear I wear over that depends on weather and temperature and so on.

And that long-sleeve top is mostly going to be some kind of sun protection top which is designed for fishing. Again via multiple trips to the US I have been using the brilliant Columbia PFG Terminal Tackle tops for years now (photo above), indeed I have worn and washed the tops I have so many times now that they are all a bit ragged and could do with replacing at some point. Having now bought some US fishing clothing via Amazon UK I now know that the price you see is exactly what you do actually pay IF you are buying direct from Amazon US and not a third-party store over there (stay within the Amazon ecosystem and their prices include all the shipping and duties involved with buying from the US). More to come on this further down the post, but for the time being I think those Columbia PFG Terminal Tackle long-sleeve tops are outstanding and they last and last. A number of people kindly advised me to look at the Bassdash sun clothing brand on Amazon UK last year, but I found their sizing to be all over the place and I didn’t like the inbuilt hoods and/or face masks at all. I returned the gear for a refund.

Because of my working with Savage Gear I have tried a bunch of their sun protection type fishing tops. In an ideal world they would all be perfect because I can get them for free, but in reality the only one I do quite like wearing in warm weather is their Savage Gear Night UV Long Sleeve T-Shirt (photo above). With my history I have to take sun protection whilst I am fishing really seriously and I refuse to compromise in any way. At the moment I find that some of the Savage Gear clothing is a bit weird with sizings, plus the sleeves could do with being a bit longer to provide proper coverage around the wrist area. This might sound a bit anal, but when you’re trying to cover up from the sun I can’t see any point in not doing things properly. The Savage Gear Savage Salt UV Hoody is pretty good in regular weather or layered up in the winter (photo below), but I find the material a bit thick for when it gets really warm. With both tops I go with the XXL sizes, indeed with any of the Savage Gear clothing I know about at the moment I would urge you to go with one size up from what you usually are.

A few years ago now we had a really nice lad come fishing with us on one of our guided trips over in Ireland. This bloke started up the Anglers Only clothing company which I think is an amazing thing to do, but in my ignorance I had no idea that they had started doing some sun protection gear. I do now though, and the other day I bought a couple of their tops to try them out. I absolutely love the fact that a UK based company is offering technical sun protection clothing, and their “Fender” SPF50+ long-sleeve fishing top (photo below) feels up there with my Columbia PFG tops - but the Anglers Only Fender top is cheaper AND it’s available from a UK fishing junkie designer and supplier. I have fished in mine a few times now and it’s fantastic to wear in properly warm weather. I went for the XXL size and I am glad I did.

I also bought one of the Anglers Only “Fin UP” Bamboo Sun Hoodies. Again it’s an SPF50 long-sleeve top and it feels incredibly soft and easy to wear, but I haven’t worn it out fishing yet because I have been wearing their Fender top. I will be giving it a good go over in Ireland in a couple of weeks when I am doing some guiding work. I went for the XXL version again and it fits me really well. I know very little about clothing materials, but this Fin Up Bamboo Sun Hoodie from Anglers Only feels about as soft and comfortable as clothing is ever going to get.

So let’s move on to our faces and heads. Polarised sunnies are a given and I am still using and loving the outstanding - and not at all expensive for what they are - Fortis Vista sunnies with the Amber lenses for UK and Irish fishing. I have a massive head and I tend to struggle finding baseball caps which sit quite right, so for a while now I have been wearing the Savage Gear Sun Visor on my bonce and it works pretty well (photo above). Obviously not great if you’re thinning on top but I’m not down that road yet. I also have an old Columbia wide-brimmed hat from the days when I used to shoot photos in places like the Seychelles. I think it’s called a Bora Bora Booney and it’s really good for total top of the head coverage (photo below).

Your face is obviously going to get hit by the sun a lot when you’re fishing, and especially with all the reflection off the water. If I am going down the sunscreen route the details are further up the page, but I am so used to wearing a “cover my whole face up” kind of sun face mask these days. These things might look somewhat strange but I don’t care at all because I’d far rather be protecting myself when I am fishing rather than worrying about how I might look. I have a lot of experience with different sun face masks now, and whilst the Simms Sungaiter (in the photo above) is incredibly comfortable and cut perfectly for your face and your neck, the breathing holes always end up falling apart with regular use so I have given up on them.

I did some research a while back and came up with the US fishing clothing brand HUK, so I took a punt and ordered one of their HUK Men's Neck Gaiters off Amazon (as I said above, the price you see is the price you pay, I don’t quite know how Amazon UK do this with the product coming in from the US, but it works). I have worn this HUK Men's Neck Gaiter a lot now (photo above), and so far it’s outstanding - really comfortable, it covers me up completely, and none of the breathing holes are coming apart or anything like that. I also have a “bring out the gimp” sun balaclava which is made by BUFF I believe (photo below). I might look like an extra twat when I am wearing it, but again who cares, and it’s a very easy and comfortable thing to wear to give you total coverage without needing to wear a hat - which of course you can do if you don’t want the complete gimp look like me below!

When I placed my first ever Anglers Only order the other day, they very kindly put one of their Fin Up UPF50+ Cooling Neck Gaiters in the box for me to try out - and it’s really good as a sun face mask, photo below. Along the lines of what many of us know as a BUFF - if you know, you know - the Anglers Only Fin Up UPF50+ Cooling Neck Gaiter is made from a really nice and cool-feeling material that is very stretchy, and there are also a bunch of breathing holes which I will keep an eye on to see how they last.

The last item for me are sun gloves which I wear a lot of the time in really sunny weather especially. This might seem like a step too far to be wearing lightweight gloves for fishing, but I was advised by the skin cancer people at Derriford that it seriously can’t hurt to also protect the backs of your hands when you are fishing in the sunshine. I have got an old, nearly knackered pair of sun gloves which have lasted for ages and which I used to use for photography in the tropics especially, but I haven’t got a clue who makes them. When I took a punt on that HUK Men's Neck Gaiter, I also took a bit of a punt on a pair of HUK Men's Pursuit Sun Gloves (photo below). They are not cheap but I need to take this stuff very seriously, so it’s a part of the costs involved with my going fishing. These HUK Men's Pursuit Sun Gloves have been perfect so far, with minimal signs of damage after I don’t know how many thousands of casts. I did try a pair of the Savage Gear Marine Half Gloves, but as true sun gloves they don’t work because they don’t cover nearly enough of the back of your hands up to your wrists if that makes sense. Nice feeling gloves with really good grip, but I’d like them changed to become proper sun gloves.

Anyway, so there you go. Sorry if I have bored the pants off a lot of you, but as I said I need to take sun protection even more seriously than I used to before I got the bad skin cancer. On the one hand I am going to naturally say don’t be a tit and protect yourself as much as possible, either with sunscreen or the right clothing or a combination of both, but on the other hand I have to leave it up to all of you here as to how seriously you take all this. One piece of advice I can give you is to take me as an example. Yes I have done a lot of fishing related work in some very hot countries where we would be out and about for hours on end in the worst of the sunshine, but I have always been very careful and I have never got sunburnt on these trips - yet I got a melanoma and I am currently waiting for the results of something they cut off my back the other day. It’s most likely nothing, but if by reading this blog post I can influence even one person to take their own sun protection more seriously then it’s more than worth it. You all have a good weekend……………..

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I have to take sun protection very seriously (but then I did anyway) - hope that some of this info on how to protect yourself might be helpful

© Henry Gilbey 2023