Fishpond Westwater Rolling Duffel Review

If you travel long distances to fish, you know this scenario all too well.

You pack for your trip. You head to the airport and check in. You throw your big rolling duffel on the scale, and it weighs…56 pounds. No matter how pretty your smile, these days 56 pounds results in a hefty overweight bag fee, or a real pain-in-the-butt baggage shuffle at the check in counter. It’s amazing how often your big fishing bag weighs 56 pounds!

What you might not realize is that a big chunk of that weight isn’t your reels or your waders or your stack of Clive Cussler books – it’s the bag! Throw it on the scale and you might be surprised – lots of big rolling duffels weigh 13 pounds or more.

Fishpond Westwater Rolling Duffel

The Fishpond Westwater Rolling Duffel weighs 8 1/2 pounds. That 4 1/2 pound difference will, very frequently, make the difference between overweight and not overweight – come on, you can sweet talk your way out of a 2 pound overage, right? This is a big, well, designed, lightweight rolling duffel, and that light weight is the bag’s killer feature, in our humble opinion.

Water Resistant

Great feature #2 is that the bag is highly water resistant. The body of the bag is actually waterproof, and the zipper is water resistant. You can’t submerge the bag (when was the last time your big travel bag was underwater?), but it’ll keep your stuff dry on the way into the airport, sitting on the tarmac, and on the boat ride to the lodge.

Other Features

There’s a big laminated pocket on the underside of the top flap that’s great for travel documents or small books. There’s another zippered organizer pocket along the length of the bag inside.

It’s got a little outside zip pocket for last-minute things you remember on the way out of your house, and there are and handful of lash points on the outside of the bag if you want to strap on a rod tube or a raincoat.

That’s pretty much it, and that’s pretty much all you need!

Summary

The Westwater Rolling Duffel is a great go-to big bag for long fishing trips. It’s simple, durable and highly water-resistant. Most importantly though, it’ll save you 5 pounds, and as anglers who travel a lot, that’s a very big deal to us.

You can pick one up at your local fly shop or online right here.

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