Mebbe I’ll have to take another look – and mebbe at those Weinbrenners you mention. Not least, I’m happy to acknowledge that X thousand or million other flyfishers who use this stuff regularly can’t be wrong, and it’s in the interest of no business to sell just one unit per customer and then kill ‘em with it…

Thanks again for your thoughts!!

They’re excellent when rock hopping small streams (the rubber grips dry rocks much, much better than wet felt).

And I consider them better than plain felt soles in most cases, and while studded felt offers better grip when you’re wading on algae-slimed cobble, the difference simply isn’t that big – not when weighed against the contamination and the significant durability issues we suffer around here.

Felt is also no damned fun in the winter when it loads up with ice or mud on the way to the river.

I’ve fallen at the same rate with studded rubber as I did with studded felt. I’m sold on the new stuff.

Now, I reckon that if any material on the sole of your boot needs studs to make sure you can stand upright on any surface except level grass or concrete… what’s it doing there on your sole at all? I can think of lots of ways of killing myself that are much more fun than slip-sliding to my death in a trout stream. Controlled failure mode? I lived with that fear for about a year, and can’t recommend it at all!

I wouldn’t trust the straight rubber soles except in a few limited circumstances.

Plastic soles: it’ll be a while before I try putting my faith in those again. I spent the best part of a season in Aquastealths from a well-known East Coast US supplier, feeling like a greased eel on an ice-rink the whole time, no matter what the substrate, from chalkstreams to limestone cobbles boulders to granite cobbles. Finally I sent them back and reverted to studded felt: since then, no problemo…

I used to fish studded felts exclusively on the Upper Sac (which isn’t an easy river to wade, though not the hardest either), and found the transition to studded rubber soles (Weinbrenners) an easy one.

I wrote that studded rubber had 80%-85% the grip of studded felt, but I’d like to amend that now. It’s a bit slipperier, but has the advantage of a controlled failure mode. In other words, studded felt sticks until it doesn’t; studded rubber slides a little until my food finds purchase.

Plus they last a hell of a lot longer, they’re better when you’re rock-hopping on dry rocks, and they do track less crap back to the truck.

Michael: Thanks.

Theo: I’m not sure it’s all that environmentally friendly when you’re running another freezer that’s empty a good part of the time, but I never argue with a man with a plan to get rich.

Easy solution is to move to the mountains; in the winter I just leave my boots outside for a night, and by morning they’re frozen solid.

I do wonder what opportunities might come out of this.

Yes, a 50% cut on turnover will do nicely…

Theo

Marshall has a good rundown on the issue: http://www.fly-fishing-colorado.com/wordpress/invasive-species-control/

I only use my boots in the Smokies – felt soles, along with any sort of wading, is a non-starter in our gumbo-mud marsh, so it will be a while before I’ll need a new pair…by then, it may very well be impossible to find any felt. The complaints I’ve read about the new soles not gripping in the water as well as felt will hopefully be resolved by then.