Waders, I've been using waders for over 40 years now, from early rubber thigh waders, which perished over time, inherited a pair of neoprene Gul chesties from Keith Sellick. They were great, totally waterproof and lovely and warm, I used to walk the mile or so down to Fiddlers reach on the Kennet, leave the seat at home and sit anywhere, in a puddle if necessary. This was in the winter. I tried it once, around September, it was like having a Turkish bath!!! I once ate some Garlic sausage I'd been using for bait, those neoprenes stunk of Garlic from my sweat for a couple of years.
Started doing some night fishing for sea Trout which involved being up to ones waist in water all night and after a while they started leaking around the crotch.
Investigated breathables and got a cheapish (£100+) pair of Shakespeare's, fine for a year and then they started leaking from the crotch too.
Loving the fact that the breathables didn't automatically give me a sauna in the summer but I could wear something warm underneath if necessary I took the plunge and paid £350+ for a pair of Simms. Almost 10 years on they're still going strong. Unfortunately they haven't expanded to match my waistline. I was told at the time that there are only two factories in the world that manufacture the material for the breathables, Simms and the other one, which serves all the other manufacturers.
One of the first times I used the Simms was another September walk down to Fiddlers, wearing just my boxers underneath to avoid the expected heat.
I might as well have been wearing nothing! Simms breathables really are breathable, I could feel the wind on my legs.
So the moral of the tale is avoid cheap waders. Other manufacturers than Simms have upped their game but it's, if anything, more of a minefield than it was, with lots out there, some good, some not so good.
Mention has been made of Diver Dave who offers a fantastic service repairing waders, he also takes warranty returns from certain manufacturers, pressure tests, re seams and reinforces known weak points. Then selling them. It's very telling that the only makes that this applies to are Vision, Airflow, Snowbee and Sonic. Simms don't seem to get returns or handle them themselves.
With regard to the bootfoot/ stockingfoot argument I'm very much in the stockingfoot camp, the boot/wader seam is very much a weak point and stockingfoots give much more choice of footwear. If you want to wear trainers, sandals or even field boots the option is there. I suppose you could even wear wellies if you wanted.
Proper wading boots give excellent ankle support and with studded felt soles make wading in rocky bottomed rivers a much much safer affair. Plain rubber soles are a complete menace on anything other than clean gravel, studs improve things but felt rules!
I recently got a pair of Vision Ikons from Dave and I'm really torn between using them, because they're excellent and not expensive and a pair of Simms which have had the Dave treatment and would sell for a good price on Ebay.
Decisions decisions.
That is, I'd like to be free to wade to 'crotch-depth'. I don't really want to go 'whole hog' and buy a pair of chesties as most of my wading takes place in the (warmer) summer/autumn so wish to buy a pair of waist waders..i.e. a pair that I can walk a mile or so in the heat in. I'd rather have boot-footed to reduce the hassle of wet wading boots etc. But after doing a bit of research I've not found that many reasonable options. Started by looking at breathables but the closest I've found so far to what I want is Snowbee Nylon/PVC (i.e. non-breathable) waisties.
