Gear test: Redington Siren

By Kathleen Lavelle

When it comes to wading boots, I am not your typical consumer.

Although my techniques are not those of the traditional fly fishermen who frequent the watersheds I call home, I have seen more stream miles and laid eyes upon more native brook trout than most people in the hills of North Central Pennsylvania. My name is Kathleen Lavelle, I am the field coordinator for Trout Unlimited’s Pennsylvania Coldwater Habitat Restoration Program and I wear my wading boots to work.

TU’s mission to protect the pristine and restore the degraded brings me to some of the most productive, threatened, and impaired watersheds in the state. On any given day while living the dream, work can take me to outflows of abandoned coal mines or a yet-to-be documented brook trout stream teeming with young of-the-year brookies.

TU works with many groups and agencies to restore water quality and protect habitat for trout across the country, which is no small task in Pennsylvania, and no piece of equipment tells that story more clearly than my wading boots.

I wear my boots for 9 to 12 hours a day and rarely sit or stand still at work. I depend heavily on my boots to be comfortable enough to put in the long hours and tough enough to endure the abuse between lace up and dry time.

At the end of the 2015 fieldwork season my wading boots were old and tattered as a result of so many months of having been “rode hard and put away wet,” as the saying goes.

Redington came to the rescue.

In late 2015, Redington hooked up our team with new pairs of Redington Siren wading boots. The year these boots have gone through not only proved a good test of their function and durability, but provides a good snapshot of what kind of work the Pennsylvania Coldwater Habitat Program team does.

Last fall I broke mine in over miles of stream walks counting redds (trout spawning sites) in Cross Fork Creek, a tributary to Kettle Creek which remains one of the most sought after trout waters and public lands in the state.

I wore them through a winter field season to complete hundreds of culvert assessments in order to identify where road-stream crossings were creating barriers resulting in fragmented trout habitat.

In the spring I wore them to assist an Indiana University of Pennsylvania grad student in tagging nearly 1,000 trout with passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags to track their movement in regards to road-stream crossings in the Little Bear Creek watershed, a tributary to Loyalsock Creek. Over the course of that project I lugged 6-volt batteries used to keep the equipment running more than 10 miles.

 

In late summer and early fall 2016 I worked with TU staff, county conservation districts, Department of Conservation and Natural Resources staff, TU Chapters, machine operators, and  countless volunteers and landowners to construct 3,800 feet of habitat structures for trout in nine watersheds across the commonwealth.

I also wore my Sirens to collect hundreds of water samples, overturn substrate to sample aquatic macro invertebrate populations, and complete fishery surveys in watersheds in the West Branch of the Susquehanna River that were previously devoid of life due to impacts of abandoned coal mines.

These boots saw some of the very first bugs and fish to repopulate those streams that are now recovering due to successful installation of passive treatment systems and continued efforts to improve water quality.

In all I have put over 1,000 hours on these boots.

How did they do?

Great.

 

The stiff high top and comfortable ankle cushions keep me agile while hiking over rough terrain and navigating streams while the wide base of the sole provides stability without compromising the lightweight design and gives flexibility where I need it.

After my last pair of boots practically disintegrated, I was interested to see how the abrasion-resistant design of the Sirens would hold up. I was really impressed. The outside fabric shows barely any major scuff marks or wear, despite my using them regularly to overturn substrate and rocks in order to collect aquatic macro invertebrates. Some seams are starting to stretch and give but the boots still fit and function like new.

The soles of these boots were not as knobby as my previous pairs, so my first few steps into notoriously slippery abandoned mine drainage streams were well calculated. To my pleasant surprise the low profile of the tread did not slip an inch. Even after miles of wear and cleaning them religiously the tread holds just as tight as they did out of the box.

Thanks again, Redington, for the Sirens. I look forward to continuing to put them to the test for another thousand-plus hours in 2017.