Fishing Arizona & The Colorado River

I’ll be the first to admit that plastic rain ponchos aren’t as good as a proper rain suit, but they’re pretty darn close and they have other uses. They make a dandy tarp to protect equipment in a pinch. You can use them to carry water. Snap two of them together and string a line and you have a halfway decent shelter. They’re cheap, compact, and they used to be everywhere.

I know. I know. I’m not going to melt if I get wet, but if it’s really coming down like it was here the other day it’s not all that pleasant to get soaked like somebody turned a water hose on you. I was working in the shop and decided to call it a day when the rain just busted loose like a dam failure. I started to make the dash from the back door of the shop to the back door of the house when I thought, “I’ve got a couple rain ponchos under the seat in The Tin Can.”

I pulled out the first one and I had to stretch the hole in it to get it over my head. It was tiny. I don’t remember rain ponchos being such dinky little stingy pieces of plastic. I pulled it back off and tried the second one only to find it was the same. What the heck happened to plastics rain ponchos?

Big enough to snap two together and make a shelter for two men is not something I heard. It’s something I’ve done. The first time I recall doing that was on a canoe trip down the Mohegan River with my Uncle Paul. The first night we camped out on a small island in the middle of the river, strung a cord between two saplings, and drapped a couple of rain poncho snapped together over the cord. With a few sticks driven in at key points and some cord wrapped around the hoods to expand out the sidewalls we had an acceptable shelter from the rain when we slept. It certainly wasn’t perfect. It can’t compare to a quality tent with a rain fly, but we slept through the night and we weren’t miserable.

Where in the heck can I get THOSE rain ponchos?

Drop me an email if you have the answer.