I’ve got some gear here to try out as an alternative to BCWs for some of my fishing

I would guess that a lot of you here are in the same boat as me. You essentially live in your BCWs (breathable chest waders) for most of or even all of your saltwater fishing, but from time to time you wonder if there might be an alternative solution for at least some of the fishing you do. I dread to think how many different pairs of BCWs I have gone through over a lot of years now, and over a lot of time and experience I have ended up settling for the most part on Vision BCWs. It was their Ikons which really got me interested, and the newer but similarly priced Koski BCWs continue to do a good job for me. I have also been using the hell out of a pair of BCWs which I can’t talk about yet but which have genuinely been as close to perfection as I have come across so far. Note the words “so far” though - you and I both know that with what we put them through, BCWs are not bloody cheap and they are going to fail at some point………….

I always wear BCWs for fishing like this, but is there another way?

Now whether that failure is down to us or the actual product is a subject for another blog post, but surely you are sometimes out fishing and you’re wearing your BCWs but you hardly need to wade and you end up wondering if something else might do a similar job? A lad used to comment on here and kindly try to steer me towards a Gul leggings based system that he was using very effectively, but I guess I wasn’t at the right point in my progression curve to open up to a BCW alternative. Later last year I noticed a Facebook post from an Irish angler who I have not met yet but who I have a lot of respect for, and he was starting to talk about an alternative “clothing system” as such. We started to correspond a bit about it all and my interest was definitely piqued, and the long and short of it is that I am now in possession of some items of clothing which I am going to put into use and see how they might or might not work for me.

This Irish lad (check out his YouTube channel here) was telling me to have a close look at the specialist Palm kayaking wetsuit gear for the leggings part especially. Bear in mind here that we are talking about moving away from a system which revolves around a pair of BCWs which obviously aren’t waterproof if they leak (all BCWs will leak eventually). I can’t pretend that the idea of potentially getting wet feet and calves and legs particularly thrills me, and especially when I am as used to wearing BCWs as I am the compression type gear I wear underneath them, but Cormac assures me that firstly you sometimes don’t actually get wet feet with his system, and that if you do the way the stuff works you don’t even notice it after a while anyway.

My basic understanding is that the kayaking wetsuit gear is easier and more comfortable to move around in because of the brushed linings used inside. My girls both have two or three wetsuits each for their sailing and surfing and so on, and whilst I am miles away from being any kind of wetsuit expert, their wetsuits don’t have any kind of lining and I can’t imagine that they would be particularly comfortable for long walks and scrambles and so on. They are designed to be used in the water after all! This Palm kayaking gear (“the plush Quick Dry lining drains and is dry to the touch much faster than conventional wetsuits”) feels really quite comfortable and flexible and easy to move around in, but as ever the proof will be in the pudding and I am at day one here. You know me though. I am interested in trying new stuff out and I am going to give this gear a go and see what happens.

I do know that BCWs are still going to play a big part in a lot of my fishing and indeed photography. I don’t like cold water! For how long my resistance might last depends on how these neoprene leggings and however I end up using them do for me, but I can’t imagine that standing say waist deep in cold UK and Irish water for a few hours is very doable at many times of the year if you are not sealed up against getting wet. But what about wandering along a bit of coastline where you need to move around over rocks and boulders and you might only end up knee-deep at best during a fishing session? As much as I live in my BCWs, how much are we actually wading out and fishing in the water?

I have got so many questions and I can think of any number of different scenarios where I am not sure how this Palm gear could work for me, but if this angler over in Ireland is getting on so well with the gear then I am very open to giving the stuff a go for my own fishing. I have the Palm Blaze Longjohn, Palm Blaze pants/leggings, and Palm NeoFlex leggings here to try out, plus the Palm Gradient boots and some neoprene socks to finish the bottom half off. I am going to have to experiment a bit with the top half of what I end up wearing depending on weather and conditions and locations, especially because logic calls for a smock-type waterproof top which you can tighten up around your waist - but I far prefer wearing jackets with zips down the front when I need to wear a waterproof top. I am also really interested to see how the Blaze Longjohn might work out on longer walks in warmer weather perhaps. I wonder if it will end up being the 3mm Blaze and thinner 0.5mm NeoFlex leggings/pants which end up being the most useful items in the long run?

I tend to fish a lot of shorter sessions over what I think are the best parts of a tide, so I am pretty well placed to try this gear out I guess. I don’t see myself doing those long guiding days over in Kerry for example in anything other than BCWs, but for a couple of hours which might involve a good walk or scramble and I might only get my legs wet a few times plus get splashed by the sea of course? I am fascinated to see how this kayaking wetsuit gear might or indeed might not work for me. It’s going to take me a good bit of time to work a new modular system out as such - plus let’s be honest I wasn’t exactly designed to be trussed up like this! - but I am very open to giving this a go. If I end up getting really cold or I am too drippy to cope without BCWs then when I am fishing around here I am often not very far from home and I am sure I can tough it out for a few hours! Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that, plus I would suggest that I know about as much about saltwater fishing in BCWs as almost anybody out there, so it’s not as I need to know much more about how they work for me. I know their strengths and weaknesses and I know that although an auto-inflate lifejacket could one day save my life, I also know that if I do end up getting washed in I’d far, far rather be wearing more buoyant wetsuit-type gear than a pair of BCWs. Here goes then, and if you see a toned athlete of a man hopping and skipping over wet boulders in some tight-fitting wetsuit leggings on your fishing travels then it’s not me!