Do sling bags kill your neck and shoulder too?

I have an older Orvis Safe Passage sling bag that I really like, but it plays all kinds of hell with my neck and shoulder. By the end of the day my neck is killing me, and I’m sore as all get out days later. Maybe it’s because it rests on my right shoulder, and I cast with the right? I really like the way it holds my gear and stays out of the way, but I can’t deal with my neck being sore every time I wear the thing.

Does anybody else experience this with sling packs? Am I just getting old?

I have a lot of problems with my neck and upper back, but wearing a sling bag does not aggravate it, even when I have it loaded pretty heavily. However, wearing a vest with the pockets loaded really does aggravate my discomfort. Of course I'm only 74 years old, so obviously age is not the issue.

Larry

Ha! I actually currently and continuously use the version 1.0 of that very pack that I picked up at an Orvis shop in Fulton/Rockport nearly 15 years ago. It was solid green back then.



I say continuously because I have wasted so much money on this stuff. I've tried all sorts of designs over the years but for some reason or another have always came full circle back to this silly looking Orvis pack. Keeps your junk out of the way, holds all of the necessary boxes, allows you to use your fishing shirt pockets more fluently, and most of all it keeps you cool. You won't get to look like a army commando like you get with some of the other types of packs, but you won't feel like popcorn in a microwave. Any extra airflow to fumigate the vapor trails from my armpits the better. Also, it's tidy and out of the way enough to keep your line from hogtying around every doo-dad hanging from your nether regions when stripping line. It's such a good system I don't even use a tippet post with it anymore.

Now about the shoulder pain, that's probably caused from compressing the blood vessels in your shoulder, not necessary "muscle" pain. That's probably why it doesn't hurt initially but will after a few hours as the soft tissue on your shoulder gets compressed into your clavicle, which in turn narrows the costoclavicular passage. When this happens, it also stretches away the nerves and the vessels, which is interpreted as pain. Because this is caused by congesting blood flow and pressured nerve bundles I doubt any preventative stretching will help. Afterwards I'm willing to bet that you get headaches or tingly fingers from it too since that is the natural effect this action has on the first/last stop in blood flow transmission to and from your head.

My sling pack doesn't cause much, if any pain to my shoulders or neck. I don't know about the newer versions, but the older one I have has a belt that runs around the waist in addition to the sling. If I started getting neck/shoulder pain the first course of action I would take (apart from unloading a couple kilograms of heavy weighted baitfish patterns) would be to tighten the belt so that it shares the load with the sling. And if you're using waders, I would just try to bring with you what you can in the pouch pocket and axe the sling altogether. If that's too problematic it might do you service to invest in some sort of waist storage system. For flies, obviously.