Packing for Bank Fishing: 25 Years Later - Bill Herzog

October 7, 2024

I cannot imagine life on the road without Sirius XM radio. I can listen to “my” music, same station anywhere I drive, no commercials and I never have to hear “Hotel California” by the snooze-inducing Eagles ever again.

Twenty-five years ago, no such luxury. If your CD player wasn’t working, you spent your trip flipping knobs trying to find a station every twenty miles featuring tolerable music that wouldn’t initiate headaches or make you plunge knitting needles into your ears.

With that in mind, how we used to carry our tackle twenty-five years ago while bank fishing was kind of like commercial radio. We used what was available, even though it wasn’t ideal it got the job done, and occasionally was just what we needed. You turned down the volume during Fleetwood Mac and cranked it back up for Led Zeppelin. This is what goes through my addled brain whenever I think of the old standard issue tackle carrier, the now rarely seen multi-pocketed vest.

My vest, man. Used to spend Friday nights before a steelheading trip laying out all my tackle, carefully placing with great calculation where and how much would go in each pocket. We all wore them, even when we spent the day in the driftboat, we worked exclusively out of our vests. The old call to arms from yesteryears’ steelheaders as you went out the front door to leave, was “Rod, reel, vest, waders!!!” So it went, this thing of ours…

Over the years, mostly by younger, more forward clearly thinking anglers, the tackle pack (backpack, day pack) became more and more popular. After the mid-2000s rare was the time you saw a bank angler wearing the old school vest. Perhaps it was just far easier to toss all your crap into a bag with shoulder straps and head out, rather than figuring out how much and where each type of terminal gear goes into which pocket.

It also got me thinking how we bank anglers have evolved in the ways and means of packing our necessities over the cobble. So, I went down into the fishing room and did some inventory of my bank fishing tackle and made some comparison to my pre-Internet ways and means.

Starting with the tried and true for five decades, the vest. I always considered it a necessary evil. How else are you gonna carry pliers, leaders, pencil lead, swivels, yarn, spoons, spinners, sharpeners, tobacco pipe (insert laughing emoji here) extra line spool, floats, hooks, etc.? I had a love/hate relationship with it, as it functioned ideally for its time, but I never cared for all that weight and bulk on my chest as it made it a pain to cast, reel and play fish, seemingly always getting caught on rod butts and streamside brush. Plus, when I took it off something always fell out of a pocket.

This was the only advantage the vest ever had over a tackle pack; you knew exactly where each type of gear was stored. Packs are great but most only feature a few compartments, some only a large main. I’ve used small zip lock bags to separate gear in the pack, usually easy to find in the clear plastic after minor rummaging around. The ziplock baggies also keep your terminals dry, the vest when it rained or you took a sloosh in the river marinated all your terminal tackle, which means when you get back it must be all taken out and dried.

I use fairly inexpensive, day packs for bank fishing. You may get as fancy as you like with fishing packs, and there are many companies out there that make some really slick product, but for me an inexpensive yet sturdy style works dandy. They usually feature two, perhaps three zippered compartments. The two on my packs are the upper smaller zippered pouch, and the main. I keep the gear I may need more often in the small upper, more easily accessible pouch like leader spools, swivels, scent spray, small beads. The main is where floats, pre-tied leaders, spoons, spinners, extra mainlines and an emergency rain jacket, basically any item I think may come into use during the stream-side hike. A small towel rounds out the must-haves for the pack. When bait fishing, handling fish, or just getting the wet shizzle off your hands a towel is never optional.

Any drinks/food fit so much nicer in a pack than the old vests. A Gatorade bottle in the zippered back pouch of my vest would poke me in the lower back, plus it would murder and render unrecognizable any sandwich/snack bars back there in the mosh pit. Do I have to remind anyone to bring a ziplock full of toilet paper…

Pack for the day as you would when bagging groceries, put the heavy stuff on the bottom. Drinks, pencil lead (for those of you who still drift fish) split shot, float weights, extra reel, spoons (heavy jigs during salmon season) and spinners on the bottom while floats, towel and food go on top.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same…

Though my old vest now hangs in the fishing closet next to other sentimental clothing/tackle memorabilia from yesteryear, there are a few tackle quirks from that era that have never gone away and are still played in heavy rotation today.

The old call to arms from yesteryears’ steelheaders as you went out the front door to leave, was “Rod, reel, vest, waders!!!”

Pliers/cutters were always front and center. I have always peeled off an inch or so of the rubber handle coating on the end of pliers and slipped on a foot or so of ½” surgical tubing, the other end tied to the “D” ring on the front of the vest. I still do that, as the tubing prevents Mr. Clumsy Hands from dropping the pliers in water too fast/deep to recover. The tubing stretches plenty far when bending down to release fish. I tie the tubing to the “D” ring at the ready in the waders’ side pouch.

Sharpeners, same treatment. Like pliers, sharpeners are expensive and as every steelheader (should) knows, you are not fishing if your hook point is not surgically sharp. I attach the sharpener to a retractable min-cord, fast to the same” D” ring next to the wader front pouch.

The only items I don’t have in the day pack are my pliers, sharpeners, braid scissors and phone (my camera) which stay at the ready in the front waterproof wader pouch. These items are always seemingly needed dozens of times during the day, makes sense to keep them handy. Taking off the pack is a pain and never seems to be at a convenient time or place.

Back when we used to send out articles to STS via the typewriter, we wore hip boots 90% of the time, no convenient wader pouch to store these at-hand items, so the vest was always front loaded with the above items and made the damn thing heavy in front. If you didn’t keep it tightly zipped up it clumsily swung around when you moved, God forbid if you forgot to zip up/snap shut a pocket it inevitably involuntarily emptied each time you bent down, usually overflowing water.

No doubt the fishing pack has permanently replaced the fishing vest. Like old fiberglass rods and direct drive reels, we loved our vests and they would still function well enough today. But, fishing packs are like high modulus graphite rods and space age reels, they make our bank fishing so much easier. Two padded shoulder straps most packs feature sit far more comfortable on your shoulders and distribute weight far better than vests. Today, when we fish harder and smarter for less, we need all the advantages we can get as bank anglers.

Next road trip, if we are bank fishing, I will be sporting a small daypack full of tackle, my vest a pleasant memory of when steelheading was wonderful. Just know, if you turn on “Hotel California,” in the truck I’m walking to the river.