RanchMT
Thanks for catching me on that one!
I'm the unofficial forum police! I'm going to be keeping my eyes on you. It reminds me of the movie with Ben Stiller and Robert Deniro where Stiller is courting DeNiro's daughter and DeNiro is an ex black ops guy and he makes a gesture with his index and middle fingers where he points them at his eyes and them points them back and Stiller and very seriously says "I'll be watching you".
Truth be told I'm just a needler and a ball buster to pretty much everyone when I'm sitting in front of a monitor haha. Face to face I'm only that way with people who aren't going to punch me.
So back to Simms - they were really good with me in that they actually sent me one pair of the waders one or two steps above the Headwaters but when they came I just hated them. They are 4 ply at the knees and seat and at 73 years old I am pretty tired at the end of a 10 hour day in MT and the last thing I want to do is fight with a pair of waders trying to take them off.
I tried them on as soon as they arrived and within an hour I was back on the phone with them again. Now their patience was waning and they said "okay we will send you one more pair of waders no shipping charges but this is the end of it". So they emailed me a return shipping tag which I printed off and packed the waders up and shipped them back via UPS the same day.
What I like about there higher end waders is they offer the booties in two size ranges where the Freestones are only one size range; 9-11. I have big feet and I was really stretching the booties on my Freestones and it was hurting my feet. The higher end waders have booties in 9-11 and 11-13 plus the booties are shaped left and right so you get a much nicer fit.
I received them in early May and decided to save them for my trip to the Missouri in late June. Well I get to the lodge and get all set up to go to the river and I wade across a channel to get onto s really large flat. I'm standing there in about ankle deep water and saying to myself "Man that water is really cold:. Then after a few minutes I got that feeling that I think we all get sooner or later and that was "I think my right foot is wet!" Remember this is my very first hour wearing these $400 waders. I bend over and examine the outside of my right leg and sure enough about 3" above the neoprene bootie there is a nice L shaped tear about 1/2" long. I was just sick. So I waded back across the channel, drove back to the lodge, took the waders off and turned them inside out and dried them with the sun and sopped up the water in the booties with the bath towels. I used the provided patch kit to apply a patch on the inside and then on the outside I had one of those glue sticks about 3/4" wide and 3" long and heated up the end until it was just melting and applied it all around the tear so it covered the tear and the margin around it. I went back to the river and was dry as a bone and have never been wet since and that will be three years in June.