SURVIVING ON A HOT DAY BY JOHN BERRY

I was scheduled for a guide trip last week. The forecast for that day was for a high temperature of ninety five degrees, a high level of humidity, sunny skies and little wind. All of this resulted in a projected heat index of one hundred and four degrees. That is hot!

My first thought was to make it a wade trip. You are much cooler on a wade trip because a portion of your body is immersed in cool fifty seven degree water. If you get warm, you just wade a little deeper. If you decide to forego waders and wet wade, it is even cooler. The prediction was for there to be no wadable water on the White and limited wading on the Norfork. We decided to float the White. In a boat, on a hot day, there is nowhere to hide.

The key to survival is to dress properly. I started with my choice of underwear. I chose silk weight capilene boxers. They are loose fitting and allow for air circulation. The silk weights are non chafing and they wick moisture away from my body. I did not wear a t shirt to keep my torso as cool as possible.

I selected a pair of loose fitting tropical fishing pants. They are highly breathable and dry quickly. They have a sun protection factor (SPF) of 50, which means that they offer a lot of protection from the sun. I have these pants in a few colors. I chose the lightest colored pair, so that they would not absorb as much heat from the solar gain as the darker colors would. I buy pants with a lot of pockets. I always carry a wallet, money, car keys and a pocket knife and I need a secure pocket for them. I also want a cargo pocket for my IPhone. I carry it in a waterproof case. I need it to check the weather, water conditions and to let my wife, Lori, know when I will be home for supper.

I also chose a loose fitting tropical fishing shirt with an SPF of 50. Here again, I selected the lightest colored one that I had. I only buy fishing shirts with button flap pockets. I want to make sure that anything I have in my pocket doesn’t fall out when I bend over to net a trout. I find the pocket flap to be a handy place to clip my forceps with attached nippers, when I am fishing. I use them often and they must be easily available at all times.

My hat is always a key choice. I generally carry half a dozen hats in the back of my suburban and I select the most suitable head gear, when I am at the access. On this day, I went for my soft straw cowboy hat, a Stetson. It is the most breathable hat I own and it has a chin strap to prevent its loss in windy conditions.

I wore my breathable fabric boat shoes. They are quick drying and provide secure footing on the wet deck of a river boat. I wore some light weight white capilene socks but would have been fine without them.

We started early and found that there was a dense fog on the river. It was difficult to see, so we would move about very slowly to avoid boats and other obstacles. The fog was cool and, when it burned off about 11:00 AM, we began to get warm. We stopped at noon for lunch and took advantage of a picnic table under a big shade tree to escape the unrelenting sun.

After lunch, it was really hot. We took a lot of extra water with us and drank constantly. It got so hot that I dunked a pack towel in the river, wrung it out and placed it around my neck to cool off. It worked for a while but required periodic dunking to keep working. The trout were unaffected by the heat and we managed to land around seventy five fish.

By carefully planning to wear the proper clothing, carrying plenty of water and taking advantage of shade when we could, we survived a brutal day and had a great day of fishing.

John Berry is a fly fishing guide for Blue Ribbon Guides in Cotter, Arkansas and has fished our local streams for over thirty years.