Kast Steelhead Gloves: Steelhead Guide Tested

Gorge Fly Shop is always looking for contributors especially when it comes from serious anglers, guys who are on the water testing the gear we love and sell, like Sam Sickles. So yet again, we bring you another Kast Steelhead Glove Review, this time from a Steelhead Guide. - GFS

Kast Steelhead Gloves

These gloves have been out for a while but I hadn’t felt the need to buy yet another pair of really expensive gloves that didn’t get the job done until this winter. I’ve been a winter steelheader in the Pacific Northwest for over twenty years but have never been as cold and miserable as this season. For the last couple of months I have been burning through the hot pockets. So…I went and dropped some money at the Gorge Fly Shop on some Kast Steelhead gloves.

All I can say is wow! These gloves are actually waterproof, windproof and cold proof. The new Outdry technology used in making the outers on this glove provides 100% waterproof protection, what’s better than that? There is a thin fleece lining on the inside, that’s better isn’t it? These gloves are noticeably “bulk free” meaning you can actually fish with them on, zip and unzip your raincoat, etc. Anyone who’s fished in the cold and the rain knows how hard it is to get your hands back into your gloves once you take them off, well the good folks at Kast put stout nylon loops on the underside to make pulling these gloves on easy.

As stated previously, the exterior shell is waterproof and windproof; it also stretches. The palms and the cuffs (inside and out) have a thin, grippy rubberized surface for equipment control. I take equipment control pretty seriously… I tested these gloves for five days straight on the Sol Duc River in Washington state. You won’t find a more demanding river than this for an oarsman. Running several classed rapids daily in a seemingly non-stop rain storm means no room for an oar to slip out of your hands. 34 degrees and raining…no problem. Equipment control means running an open sled at 35 miles per hour on the open water in the middle of winter. I wore the Kast Steelhead gloves to shovel three feet of snow out of my driveway. The craziest thing I did in these gloves was wear them mountain biking in the snow and rain and they performed without fail. All of that equipment control and my hands stayed warm and dry.

Kast Steelhead gloves are anatomically cut, meaning, somebody didn’t just trace a hand and cut out some fabric. You can actually perform real work that takes dexterity with these on. The rubberized wrist cuffs along with the wrist closures make a very tight fit, you know for those all too often under water moments that you used to take your gloves off for…smart thinking!

The folks at Kast thought of everything a winter steelheader would ever want, heck, there’s even a built in nose wipe on the back of the thumbs that’s been dubbed the “snot spot”.

Bottom line, these gloves are awesome and they will keep your hands warm when others can’t; definitely worth the money!


Features:

· Waterproof

· Windproof

· Breathable

· 4 way stretch

· Anatomical cut

· Fleece lined (that means warm)

· Grippy palm and fingers

· A nose wipe on the back of each thumb

· Rubberized, logo wrist closure

· Rubberized wrist cuffs

Sam Sickles
Steelhead Outfitters

"Fly Fish the World with Us"