The waders put to the test by the lab rats at Yellowstone Anglers.

The other day, a friend sent me this: the Yellowstone Angler 2013 Wader Shootout. It is, without question, the most thorough review of waders I have ever read.

The boys at Yellowstone Angler make a good point: how can anyone properly assess the claims made by manufactures of these products? It’s a question that anyone who has ever bought waders will find familiar. How can you compare so many different products built of different, proprietary cloths, sealed in different ways, and fit for different environments? Each claims to be the best at something; none confess to having compromised.

How do you answer these questions? According to Yellowstone Angler, you wear each wader around the shop for 2 weeks. You drop a hygrometer into each wader. You wear them on treadmills. You put them through a unique bushwacker test. And then you compare every other imaginable component of the wader. Here, for instance, is James hard at work applying the empirical method:

The article, featuring many charts, videos, and images, goes well beyond any normal review of waders. Not being satisfied with waders themselves, they make recommendations for socks, for base layers, and other items. Where others have tired early in their assessment, if they’ve bothered to make assessments at all, these men seem to never tire.

This is borne out by some of their criteria. They judged waders by all the standards you or I might think of: durability, comfort, sizing, guarantees, etc. But they also came up with a few more: ease of answering nature’s call, for instance, ease of wearing them at waist height, style, and others. They thought of everything.

In the end, the champions were fairly predictable: Simms and Patagonia took the top two spots. That there was not great upset, after all the rigorous testing, may be the only disappointing thing about the review. (But then, as the proud owner of a new pair of Simms, I was also quite happy.) That said, I was pleased to see the Dan Bailey’s come in fifth, but to be rated the “most comfortable.” Reddington took two top 10 spots, as does Cabela’s and William Joseph — the waders whose built-in personal flotation device (PFD system) promoted the most hilarious, and chilling, of the videos.

All told, this is the most thorough — and, therefore, the best — review of waders I have ever read. An exchange with a few devoted anglers confirmed they too had never read anything better. Have you? I can’t imagine, but if you have, please share it in the comments below. I’d be astonished.

I suggest  you read the review in full, but that you read it in segments. It’s a lot to take in, especially if you follow every link, and consider every recommendation. It’s too much for one sitting. And, after sitting at my desk in waders for 2 hours, I had to get up to change. The humidity in my Red Balls was too much.

—

If you’re interested interested in purchasing a pair of waders, here’s the top 4:

1. Simms G3 Guide Stockingfoot Waders

2. Patagonia Rio Gallgos

3. Simms G4 Pro Stockingfoots

4. Orvis Silver Sonic