Pro Hunter Waterproof Gloves by Glacier Glove
Wild Fish Wild Places 10.31.13
If you’re an all-four-seasons angler like me, enduring days on the water accompanied by cold biting winds and driving rain, then you’ll be interested in my recent cold-weather glove discovery.
Earlier this year, I began a campaign with the goal of landing a mid-double or, if the Gods were to smile on me, mammoth ferox trout, a rare and difficult fish to target by any standard. Ferox fishing is a branch of our sport like no other, made remarkable by the fact that the ferox hunter knowingly goes fishing with the near certainty that he will endure multiple fish-less days featuring relentless trolling, usually in wet, cold, and windy conditions.
As seasoned campaigners, we have learnt the hard way how to keep warm and dry by layering warm insulating layers of clothes under a waterproof Gore-Tex-type shell jacket and bib. The same can be said for our feet. We now have available to us insulated, waterproof boots that allow us to fish all day under whatever conditions Mother Nature decides to push our way! Our feet remain toasty and we can fish effectively.
Although my hands are fairly tough, they are the weakest link in my defenses against the hardships of cold-weather fishing—numb fingers that develop that trademark burning sensation when they eventual begin thawing out. At the start of past winters, I would buy numerous so-called “waterproof” gloves, always in hope rather than expectation that here finally was the answer to my perennial fishing hardships. Each pair was thoroughly tested and eventually discarded due to their lack of that necessary combination: warmth and waterproofing.
Not any more! I now have the answer to my cold, wet hands in the form of a pair of Pro Hunter neoprene gloves by Glacier Glove. These pre-curved, two-millimeter-thick gloves are lined with soft fleece, insulated, and 100 percent waterproof. The gloves are pre-formed in a way that looks akin to a robot’s hand! In fact, they’re so “extraterrestrial” that I can visualize a bewildered, space ship-wrecked Martian coming across a bunch of Pyramid Lake ladder fishermen and communicating in a monotone metallic voice “take me to your leader!”
The pre-formed curves on these wonderful gloves are an excellent feature. They allow for seamless joints between the palm and fingers that make them comfortable, and facilitate great dexterity when performing mundane-yet-crucial tasks like operating the sonar, opening snaps, tying on a fly, mounting deadbaits on fiddly treble hook rigs, and the like.
I have worn my Pro Hunter gloves in the worst weather conditions I have experienced this past spring. Cold, sheeting rain and gale force winds coming in from the frigid Atlantic Ocean were the order of the day during those 10-hour fishing sessions, and my hands remained toasty and dry. Gone forever are those endurance-fishing days of frozen hands which render the simple things like steering on the tiller and changing lure a bloody nightmare!
I thoroughly recommend these game-changing Pro Hunter Gloves from Glacier Glove to all of you hardy bucks who year-in, year-out go through the discomfort and hardship of frozen wet hands while trying to fish effectively during those trying days on the water.
They retail for about 40 bucks—the best 40 bucks you will ever spend on your hands.
FISH AND FISHING. TWO WORDS HAVING A MYRIAD OF MEANINGS TO A MYRIAD OF PEOPLES. TO FISH FOR FOOD, FOR LIFE, FOR SURVIVAL; OR TO FISH FOR FUN, FOR SPORT, FOR MONEY.
When, almost 5,000 years ago in China, man first attached a hook and line to a bamboo rod to catch carp a little further from the river’s edge, little did he know that this creation would evolve into an industry which at the early part of this, the twenty-first century, is worth over $108 billion annually to the US economy in terms of sport fishing alone!
The variety of fish species is infinite. From cold water inhabitants such as members of the Salmonidae family, to warm water, tropical dwellers like the Cichlids. From the gigantic Tarpon of the Florida Keys to the gentler Arctic Charr spectacularly attired in their vivid courtship colors in the frigid rivers and streams of the arctic tundra. Take the celebrated Coelacanth, over three hundred million years old and still found today in the warm seas of the Indian Ocean around Madagascar, or the seemingly ubiquitous Golden Orfe, or the goldfish, which completes endless circuits in so many glass bowls in family homes in every corner of the world.
In this series, we will seek out great predatory fish. Fish that are much revered, fish that strike terror at the very mention of their name and fish that are the staple diet of many peoples subsisting along the shorelines and riverbanks of the great waters we will visit during our odyssey. Positioned at the very top of the food chain, these apex predators reign supreme in their own domain, be it mighty river, great lake or ocean.
Our quest will take us across cultures and continents to exotic locations of immense beauty and wealth as well as lands poleaxed by poverty. We will explore not just these wild and wonderful places, but the significance of our target species to the different groupings of peoples in terms of social, economic and cultural values.
Our travels in search of extraordinary predators will take us from the cold, unforgiving waters of the West of Ireland to the steaming jungle swamps of India. From the frozen, pristine wilderness of the Canadian subarctic to the sun-baked backwaters of Northern Australia. This will be a series of contrasts and comparisons where we will meet people who live to fish and people who fish to live.
