We are basically dead in the water for a bunch of different reasons without polarised sunglasses for at least some of our fishing, not least the fact that I am going to seriously struggle to see bass moving around when I am doing the ninja stuff. A few years ago I didn’t need any kind of glasses for reading or tying knots etc., so all I did was what most of you here most likely did - grab a pair of your favourite polarised sunglasses and get on with it. Costa del Mar Permit frames with 580G Green Mirror lenses were my particular favourite, but sadly those days are gone for me………..

This getting older thing presents different challenges. At first I had to start wearing glasses for my work on a computer and reading and so on, then in time it became basically wearing glasses full time! I wear varifocal glasses and get on as well with them as wearing glasses is going to get. They are not bloody cheap but they work. I have tried contact lenses but I struggled with the transition between say fishing then picking up a camera and looking through the viewfinder. I need to give them another decent go I guess, but for the time being it’s fulltime varifocal glasses.

As I said in the title, your resident style guru I am not! Thanks to Barnaby Boss for the use of this photo

Which in turn presents a real problem when I need to use polarised sunnies. Obviously for fishing, but also for driving and for when the sun comes out and reminds you just how awesome it is here in the UK when it’s warm and sunny and lovely. I could never see any point in sunglasses which weren’t polarised, indeed I always thought that polarised lenses made the world look better when the sun was out especially, and as you know they are obviously vital when you need to cut out as much glare as possible off the surface of the water to be able to see into it. Bloody good for driving as well.

I know that some companies offer polarised varifocal sunnies, but decent ones are seriously expensive and I would need at least two pairs for starters. One pair to live in my fishing rucksack, one pair to live in the car, and perhaps even a third pair to live in the house to grab for a walk. I also spoke to an optometrist I trust who had herself got a pair of very high-end varifocal polarised sunnies and she didn’t think they worked properly at all. Something to do with the way varifocal lenses work I believe.

Clip on style polarised lenses, it’s a good look!

So I did what I usually did in situations like this and did a bit of research. Initially I came up with these clip-on, flip up or down polarised lenses which look a bit daft (my girls think dad looks like a right tit when he flips them up), but they work fairly well. You have to wear some kind of brimmed baseball cap or visor or hat to prevent glare coming in from above, and because they clip onto my varifocal glasses there is obviously no wrap-around to them which I always really liked when I could wear normal polarised sunnies. I think you see much better into the water when you can cut glare coming in from the side. Not very expensive and it’s a solution that works okay.

Clip on polarised lenses which clip onto my varifocal glasses

But then a friend of mine rocked up to fishing the other day with this pair of “over glasses” polarized sunnies. For some reason I hadn’t realised at all that this “over glasses” way of doing things was actually a thing when you are in a similar boat to me. I didn’t actually like the look of his over glasses that much because they weren’t wrap-around so they weren’t cutting glare out from the side, but they did get me thinking. Obviously if you need to wear another pair of (polarised) glasses over an existing pair of glasses they are never going to be on the smaller side, but what can you do but have a giggle and accept that you’re going to look a bit “different”?

So when I got home I had a very thorough trawl through the Amazon website at numerous different over glasses type polarised sunnies. I wanted a wrap-around style, but you need to measure the glasses you currently wear and make sure that the over glasses polarised sunnies are obviously going to fit over your glasses. Which as I said are varifocal for me, but these over glasses work just fine with regular glasses.

Okay, so now we are rocking it properly! The over glasses type polarised sunnies I have bought which are working out pretty well so far

I came across these specific over glasses here and bought them. They are not the smallest things in the world, but they do fit well over my varifocal glasses and they are fine to wear for fishing and driving and so on. I was somewhat sceptical how they might work as polarised sunnies because they are so cheap, but I am really surprised how well they work. High-end Costas they are not, but those days have gone for me and I need a wearable solution. I have fished in these over glasses a bit at home and I have been wearing them constantly out here in Kerry with this ridiculously amazing weather we are currently getting.

The weather out here in Kerry has been incredible! Full sun protection and this (very cool!) pair of polarised over glasses………

I am seeing everything I think I should be seeing with a pair of polarised sunnies, including a bloody nice bass which charged my lure the other day but turned away right at the last minute! They are pretty comfortable to wear for the long days of fishing and filming we are doing out here and I am many, many years past worrying what I might look like on camera! I never worried about stuff like that anyway, and as a solution to the need for polarised sunnies, these wrap-around, over glasses style things are not bad at all. Now I know that polarised over glasses are actually a thing, I am going to look around some more and see what I can come up with as regards different lens colours and so on. Your resident style guru I am most definitely not, but I’m feeling much happier that at least for the time being I have a solution to a problem which has been really bugging me……………

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A decent solution to the need for polarised sunnies when you wear varifocal glasses like I do? Your resident style guru I am not!

© Henry Gilbey 2023