C&F Design Micro Slit Foam Chest Patch review

What is the C&F Design Micro Slit Foam Chest Patch?

The C&F Design Micro Slit Foam Chest Patch is a tiny fly box that can be either attached to the front of your jacket, vest pack, chest pack or clipped to your wader straps to give you fast access to your flies when fishing.

How do you attach it?

There are two ways you can attach the Chest Patch. You can either use the pin on the back to clip it onto your pack or jacket, or you can attach some plastic clips to the top of the Patch and connect these to your lanyard or wader straps.

That works OK, but experience with other pin-on fly fishing accessories has proven that they have an unfortunate tendency to fall off. Hopefully, this won't go the same way. We stuck some adhesive Velcro to the back of ours so it could be attached to the Velcro patch on the Bear Fly Fishing Universal Pack we've been testing and it worked well and held fast.

How robust is it?

I have to admit to feeling a sense of disappointment here. This is quite expensive for a small fly patch, and C&F Design has a reputation for producing high quality, well-designed products, but although this looks great and works well, it doesn't feel as sturdy as I thought it would. Maybe this is just perception and it's actually going to prove much stronger than it looks, but from first impressions, the feel doesn't really match what you'd expect for the price.

What's it like to use?

The C&F Design Micro Slit Foam Chest Patch works really well. The open-sided design means flies dry quickly and can't be brushed off as they can with exposed fly patches. The fly patch foam is nice and firm so flies stay stuck in place and the magnets in the lid help keep any drying or escaped flies from falling out of the open sides. The front clip opens and closes easily too. It's really nice to use.

How much does it cost?

While this looks good and is nicely thought out, the feel of the materials used just doesn't seem worth the £25 asking price and I'm not convinced it has the resilience to withstand the abuse my regularly used fly fishing gear tends to take. I wouldn't be too bothered if it only cost £10-15, but the package just doesn't match the price tag.