Well, mebbe it aint so hard.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006 BY FRED J. AUN
For the Star-Ledger
The death of a Montville fisherman on Saturday is a tragic reminder that fishing can be dangerous, but it shouldn't be seen as proof that waders are unsafe.
Nobody really knows what happened to Justin Everrett except that the 44-year-old angler drowned near the junction of the rain-swollen Beaverkill and Willow Weemoc rivers in Roscoe, N.Y. It's not that nobody was there to see it: four of the Morris County residents' friends watched in horror.
They saw him slip while crossing a 75-foot-wide part of the stream and they saw him get swept to a place where the depth suddenly increases drastically -- going from about two feet deep to about 16 feet.
But here is where we encounter a problem, an assumption unfortunately based on a tenacious myth. Some are saying it was Everrett's engorged waders that killed him. Consider one news report, where the writer -- citing a New York State Police investigator -- wrote that "Everrett's chest waders filled with water and, like anchors, pulled him down. ..."
If waders turn into "anchors" when filled with water, the angling community might have lost one of the 20th Century's greatest trout fishing icons -- Lee Wulff -- long before his death in 1991 at the age of 86. In the 1940s, Wulff gathered some outdoors writers and staged a somewhat famous demonstration designed to dispel the myth about waders morphing into lethal anchors or, conversely, into balloons of trapped air that flip anglers onto their submerged heads.
Wulff slipped into his waders and jumped off a bridge (in February) into about 30 feet of water. His waders quickly filled to the brim, but Wulff didn't sink like the Titanic or float feet-first like a bobber. He simply swam to shore.
Despite Wulff's gallant attempt at dispelling it, the myth of killer waders survives. A report in the Great Falls Tribune of Montana described the November 2005 drowning death of an angler named Benson who slipped in the Missouri River while trying to release a fish. "The chest-high waders that Benson was wearing filled with water and pulled him under," said the paper.
In a stream situation, there are a few seconds when water rushing into waders can cause an angler to lose balance. But Wulff tried to show that once the waders are full, the water inside them is no heavier than the water in the stream and they're pretty much irrelevant to an angler's ability to survive.
If an angler can swim without waders, he or she can probably swim with them. Those who can't swim should avoid wading or use inflatable vests. And everybody should be using a wading stick, especially in fast water.
The real danger, aside from hitting heads on rocks and losing consciousness, is panic. Often, those unaccustomed to swimming in moving water flail, fight the current and succumb.
Note what the investigator said happened when two of Everrett's friends tried to save him: "The current was too strong. They had to back off." Even if it's only two feet deep, strong current can kill you, waders or not.
