A Home-Grown Fly Fishing Vest

If you pay attention only to what the big manufacturers design for fly fishers each season, it’s easy to miss the smaller inventors whose ideas come primarily from personal experience or necessity. Such is the case with the TechVest, which escaped our radar during the annual scan of new products. Les Zuck, a retired Billings engineer and president of Billings’ Trout Unlimited club, the Magic City Fly Fishers, came up with the compact, lightweight vest when he was looking for a better way to store and secure tippet material. The resulting design combines a few interesting features that are not normally seen in a minimalist vest: a removable handwarmer, a removable bungee-secured stuff bag on the back, and a rod holder that supports the rod from the handle (unlike most velcro-based tip holders). At $130, it looks like an interesting alternative for those who want to travel light.