While there are many gloves on the market, I haven’t found any that work as well for kayak fishing than the new Traction Gloves, $45.26, from Mustang Survival. That’s because with every other glove you’re forced to sacrifice dexterity for warmth, which means you’ll likely have to take the gloves off to tie on a new lure or cast a baitcaster. Not with the Mustang gloves. Yes, I’m saying you can even cast a baitcaster with these gloves and not backlash (I’m one of the worst baitcasters around and I can do it easily with a glove on).
The Traction Gloves are so good that once I put them on this early spring, I never took them off, not while I was rigging rods at the launch, not casting, swapping lures or landing fish, or even breaking down rods at the end of a day. I even drove home with the gloves on because they are so comfortable that I forgot I was even wearing them. If you simply can’t stand the feeling of wearing full gloves when you’re trying to tie knots, Mustang Survival also offers the Traction Gloves in a cutoff finger version, so you can have the best touch and still keep your hands functioning.
When testing and developing the Traction Gloves, Mustang Survival wanted to make sure that dexterity and grip weren’t hindered in any way, and only increased while wearing the gloves. The gloves not only allow you to do everything that you’d do with your bare hands, they’ve also tested an increase of 12% in dexterity over bare hands. The tacky palms of the gloves make sure you have a better grip, even when your gear is wet and the gloves have been proven to give anglers an improvement of 30-50% in grip torque tests. Once you get a pair of gloves on, the material doesn’t slide around or shift when you’re picking up kayaks or moving heavy gear, like some lesser fitting gloves will. Once these gloves are on they become like a second skin that will let anglers fish just as well on the water, if not even better.
The gloves also feature conductive fingertips so you can work your smartphone or electronics. The more and more fish finders are coming out with touchscreen displays, the more and more vital a feature like conductive fingertips becomes. Not to mention it’s just so much more convenient to be able to keep your glove one when answering a text or phone call from your buddy that’s hooking up on a different part of the lake. That’s a call you don’t want to miss.
Available in two colors (gray/red or gray/flueorescent yellow-green), the gloves will match any of your raingear or drysuit without looking weird, which means you have no excuse NOT to wear them. Since the gray gloves are more of a really dark, almost-black gray the gloves soak in more sunlight and seem to feel warmer than the lighter colored gloves I’ve tested. Loops on each side of the glove let you pull the gloves on and off with ease and a velcro closure makes sure they stay in place.
While these gloves aren’t crazy warm, as in they can’t handle near-freezing temperatures, they do a great job at keeping your digits toasty on crummy weather days when a cold front rolls in, even in early spring or late fall. If you do have to get on the water when it’s near freezing, these gloves are the perfect liner glove to wear under a thicker, pure wool glove, since they won’t move around on your hand and mess up your paddle stroke or cast.
Available in sizes S-XL. For more information about Mustang Survival, or their new Traction Gloves, check out their website, Mustangsurvival.com, or check it out in our new Paddling Buyers Guide now!
