A hard-core pack with rain protection
Let’s say you’re in southeast Alaska and you’ve borrowed a john boat with a jet outboard. It’s May and the salmon smolt are headed out of the creeks to the estuaries and there are scads of sea-run cutthroat and dolly varden there to greet them.
Keep you gear dry, look cool.
So you stop at the mouth of a big creek just as the tide turns to incoming. You tie on a smolt imitation and marvel at how many fish you actually hook. Lots of dollies in one spot with big sea-run cutts spread throughout. You get a couple 18-inchers before realizing that the tide has reached ankle level on your waders, which means that the place where you set your backpack (around a corner and out of site) is covered by the same amount of water.
That’s what happened this past May when I went on a steelhead and sea-run cutthroat expedition in southeast and left my SIMMS Dry Creek Day Pack in the mud with a Nikon D-200 camera body and three high-quality lenses contained inside. The water, fortunately only covered five inches of the pack and all the gear didn’t even get wet.
I can’t say that I’ve found the perfect fly-fishing backpack, but the Dry Creek Day Pack is one sweet piece of equipment. It’s made from 420 Denier, double-coated polyurethane nylon shell with a 210 Denier lining. What does that mean? In laymen’s terms, this pack is nearly waterproof, the only exception being the zipper, which runs over the top and sides of the bag. With that said, if you were to zip the pack and match the two zippers at the top of the bag, your gear would barely get wet, if it got wet at all, if you did a quick dunk in the drink. SIMMS touts the product as water-tight, not submersible.
Among the things I really like about this pack is comfort; the pack offers padded shoulder straps and lumbar back support. The chest and waist straps are adjustable so you can cinch them as desired. In addition, the 1,173-cubic inch pack offers two zippered water bottle holders on the sides and they are equally adept at carrying 32-ounce PBR cans, and bottled bear spray. If you want to carry multiple rods into a remote stream, rod tubes can be placed in the water bottle holders and secured by looped rod straps located near the top of the pack. That makes this pack perfect as a carry-on item during plane flights, too.
Very handy sidepockets.
Ok, so what’s this pack missing? I could see a couple improvements, one being a padded bottom so that fragile gear, including cameras, would receive a little more protection. Currently, to remedy that problem, I place a fleece shirt or a T-shirt at the bottom of the pack and load my gear on top of it. In addition, I could see lock-down zippers being implemented so the chances of the zippers opening unsolicited would be alleviated.
So, what’s the verdict? I say buy this pack, which retails for $129.95. It can be used with any of SIMMS’ Dry Creek or Headwaters packs, meaning a fishing system can be attached to the front of the pack. I’ve carried this pack to southeast Alaska, northern and southern British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and extensively through Montana, and it’s worked great for me. I’ve even worn it on mountain bike rides and to retail and trade shows. Its seen a solid workout, with very little care, and it’s still performing perfectly. Check it out at www.simmsfishing.com