Rob's System for Staying Warm on the Water - pt 2!

Rob’s Coldweather Layering System – Part 2

Welcome to part two of our series on strategies to beat the cold! If you missed part one, here’s a link to it to get you up to speed. This week we’re talking about one of the most interesting challenges we face as anglers, being super active and super stationary, back-to-back!  
 
Active & Static
 
We have a tough challenge as anglers – trying to stay warm while submerged in cold water while being relatively still, mixed with bursts of increased movement.
 
When the water cools, we often fish and move slower to match the needs of fish.  When we move less we produce less heat, when we hike between spots we generate more heat. So how do you dress for these two different extremes?
 
Activewear vs. Static-wear
 
Ok, so we just made the word “static-wear” up, but hear us out, we needed a term for clothing made to be worn while standing stationary in the cold.
 
To illustrate our point, we can look to other situations for how gear needs change between different activities. Let’s look at hunting for a quick minute as it illustrates gear demand differences quite clearly.
 
If you can imagine an upland game hunter, covering many kilometres in a day’s outing, they’re generating a lot of heat and staying warm with their constant movement. Fingers and face may get cold being exposed directly to the elements, but core temps stay up. Compare this to a hunter sitting in a tree stand in freezing temperatures, barely moving for hours on end, it’s a very different ball game. If they swapped clothes, they’d both face big issues, one would quickly overheat and the other could be near hypothermia.
 
At the shop we often hear “Oh, I’ll just use my ski clothing” when referring to a thermal layer.  We’re big believers in not purchasing more than you need to if the piece of gear is up to the task. But are your ski or hiking socks designed to keep you warm while standing in frigid water for long periods? Ski and hiking socks are usually thin, designed to keep contact with your boot for energy transfer and control, but they don’t offer the loft we need to stay warm, they are made for active sports. This is why we need to be thoughtful in the layers we choose.
 
As anglers, we face both the active scenario and the inactive scenario, so how do we manage these extremes?
 
Managing the Walk-In
 
If you layer up with all your warmest layers and zip them up tight, then hike in a ways to a spot, you’re going to sweat (if you’re anything like us).  Once you sweat, you’re damp, and you’re going to get cold.
 
The issue in this case isn’t the walk-in itself, it is walking in with too much warm gear on.
 
What’s our strategy here?

Layering down before layering up. If you’re walking into your spot and you know you’ll be generating heat, leave some layers off during this period of increased activity.  Once you arrive, take some time to air out, then get those layers on and keep warm. Depending on the number of layers you plan on wearing, you may be able to carry them in-hand, but for very cold temps when multiple layers are needed, packing those layers in a backpack makes a lot of sense.
 
 
 
Building out your Layering System
 
As you can see, there is a lot to discuss when it comes to building out your layering system, and there is no one size fits all solution to this topic.  What it boils down to is making sure you have thermal layers with adequate loft for when you are not very active (standing in frigid water working a run), and making sure that your layers are removable for longer periods of higher intensity activity (hiking in to the river).
Layering is critical for our colder months here in Ontario, and anywhere else you may be heading during times of colder weather.  Making sure you’re prepared for the weather you may face while out fishing is one of the easiest ways to make that precious time on the water as enjoyable as possible.  Never be afraid to ask the guide or lodge that you are travelling to what they would recommend or give your local fly shop a call and see what they would recommend for your local weather and waters!
 
Stay tuned for part 3!