Being a hiker with lots of hours with backpacks I thought the design was going to be a big improvement to the comfort of wearing a vest. It's a compromise. The hip belt is really nice and I find it more useful as a back support wading belt than for the load bearing support that I thought this would be. When loaded with fly boxes, etc, the front is more like a normal vest. The weight seems to ride on the shoulders. I'm sure part of the weight is distributed to the hips but how much? The rear panel does expand and you can put a hydration bladder there, so that weight is carried low. When the front pockets are loaded, the vest interferes with two handed casting. I do like the ability to use the sternum strap when it's hot or zip up when it's a bit cooler.
This is definitely the best pack I have used for carrying loads of stuff for fishing (plenty of room for multiple fly boxes, the hydration bladder area can accommodate a rain jacket, the hip-belt will hold your lunch+a digital camera). The hip belt puts your carrying weight where it should be (hips, not shoulders). While this vest/pack does enable one to carry a load of gear, it is somewhat overkill for the type of fishing I normally do (e.g. 3 hours or so, needing 1 liter of water, a spool of tippet, and a single fly box).
The primary reason I give this four stars (and not five) is that the two outer mesh pockets have no methods to keep them shut/closed. I have put tippet in these pockets, only to have it fall out when shoving the vest in a duffel bag. Its true you can keep your tippet in an inner pocket (these have either zippers or velcro), but access to the inner pockets is more cumbersome.
