What is a good life jacket to get??  I'm not too much for the traditional styles.

I've been doing a lot of research on this very same subject lately, and have narrowed my choices down to one.  It's light, effective, and I can wear it in the 100 deg heat of Oklahoma August.

Mike

Sorry, I forgot to tell you the one I have selected.

http://www.basspro.com/servlet/catalog.TextId?hvarTextId=59721&hvarTarget=search&cmCat=SearchResults

I really like that one.  Thanks Mike

That 1 is not hydro static. I would spend the exter money.

Garnet

I  have that type not that brand.  It is automatic and I have had it 3 years.  Don't take it of when fishing and does not hamper my fishing in any way.

Kelley

Question... do those automatic inflatable jackets ever pop when it's pouring rain?

Also, are they easy to stuff back in to reuse it with a new CO2 cartridge?  If not, I wonder how that would work in a tournament, if popped, and it took over 30 minutes to repack, thats a lot of wasted time on the water.

I have a couple of the SOSpenders World Class Automatic PFD's.  Once they go on, they stay on 99.999%.  I am comfortable in them.  I have heard reports that they would deploy in the rain, mine never have.  They shouldn't since the sensing device is under a flap facing downward.  If you got swamped by a wave I could see it happening.  You do need to re-arm them every year (new pellet).  Should one deploy on you (accidentally or however) a complete re-arming with pellet and cartridge is probably about 10 minutes.  Most folks don't carry all that with them, so I would guess that you would be fishing with a deployed vest.  It should stay that way about 24 hours w/o intervention on your part.

If you stow them in humid conditions,  they can and will deploy on their own.  Takes a long time for this to happen.  Also if you do not re-fresh the pellet as you should the same thing will happen.  You can guess how I know this.

The mustang hydrostatic jacket use water pressure to automatically inflate. You need to submerge it in 5 inches of water to get it to inflate. So humidity,rain, or falling overboard don't effect it at all. The SOS and cabela's brands use the pellets that can do that in those situations.

Those are really nice.  I am debating which to buy as well, Although the Ranger vests are very nice too.

I have a similar type, they are great, hardly notice you are wearing it. The user manual says it will pop when it gets wet, I store it in a dry bag and remove the cartridge when in storage. As far as putting it back, Im not sure exactly how long it takes, to put back, but if it is raining I would wear rain gear over it, or wear a different one. The indiacator to make it pop is close to the bottom, so it should be fine with rain gear