The jacket that quit on you last fall probably isn’t broken. The membrane that actually makes it waterproof rarely fails; what fails is the water-repellent finish on the outside, the tape over the seams, and the zippers and cuffs where driven rain gets in. Most of that you can fix at home, and the rest you can check before you buy. Chasing a bigger waterproof number is the wrong move for most anglers, and knowing what actually goes wrong changes what you look for in a new shell.

This matters in fall more than any other season, because fall is when you most want to be out in bad weather. The pattern that produces the best fishing — a falling barometer ahead of a front, thickening cloud, wind, dropping temperature, fish stacking calories before winter — is also the one that is hardest on gear and on the angler wearing it. That pre-front feeding probably comes from several things at once, lower light and surface chop and wind pushing the bait around and the fish loading up for winter, and falling pressure is only one debated part of it, even though pressure tends to get most of the credit. The best hours usually come in rough weather, and the jacket is what keeps you out in it.