The Simms ProDry jacket is comfortable to fish in all day long

Impressions: Simms gained prominence as a supplier of premium fly fishing garments but over the last two seasons has quickly gained a foothold in the bass market with the introduction of a complete range of garments designed for both everyday anglers and tournament anglers. Last ICAST they introduced the premium the ProDry Gore-Tex rain jacket which was built with a single purpose, to deliver the very best fishing rainwear on the market.

Built into the pocket is a polishing cloth

Impressions: Like most of the company’s products the ProDry is immediately recognizable as Simms garment. The jacket features clean lines and is available in familiar Simms colors that include greys, greens and the bright orange that is a common element on many Simms waders, fly vests and jackets. You can’t mistake this jacket for that of another brand as the ProDry is also somewhat of a walking billboard and has the Simms logo proudly displayed on all sides.

The Simms logos double as reflective surfaces for visibility

The jacket features a large stowable storm hood, adjustable cuffs and an adjustable waist. There are also a number of large pockets including two high capacity chest pockets capable of holding low profile tackle boxes, and there are even two zippered microfleece lined hand warmer pockets that come complete with built in heat pack pockets for those extremely wet and cold days.

The cuffs are watertight preventing water from entering your sleeves

Though the ProDry Jacket looks rather large it does fold down and pack quite small since there is very little insulation beneath the Gore-Tex main layer. This is a rain jacket, not an extreme cold weather jacket so insulation needs to come from other garments like a fleece worn underneath.

Rain beads up on the Gore-Tex surface

Real World Tests: Simms has access to a rain room which simulates downpours. The ability to test garments in this environment allows the company to continually test, alter and re-test during the design process. Unfortunately other than a pressure washer we have no such apparatus at our disposal so we had to rely on good old Mother Nature for the majority of our water and wind tests. We purchased a ProDry Jacket and Bib directly from Tackle Warehouse and fished the garment from Winter through Spring. While we logged plenty of hours fishing the jacket in cool weather we had an abnormally dry season, even by California standards.

After a while the jacket becomes saturated but keeps you dry

While we normally hope for great conditions we found ourselves praying for rainy windy conditions so we could finally test the ProDry as well as competing garments from Gill in a real field test. Our opportunity finally came when we finally got a few days of solid rain, it was time to go fishing. During the course of the tests we fished for everything from largemouth bass to Lahonton cutthroat trout across the California and Nevada border.

The ProDry allows for free range of fishing motion