Question: I’m looking to buy a new pair of wading boots, and I want to know if I should buy ones with the new feltless soles. I think it’s important to help the environment, but I don’t wanna drown. Are they really as good as felt?

Joe, Santa Fe, NM

Answer: The short answer is: No, these boots do not offer all-around traction that’s as good as felt. However, they are a heck of a lot better than previous generations of rubber soles, performing better than felt in mud, grass and snow and offering a fine choice to anglers wading familiar streams with pebble or small-rock bottoms. If you add studs or cleats, the traction often rivals that of the "stickiest" soles.

Simms — a close-up of their feltless HardBite™ Star Cleat Studs is above — and some other companies now offer stud kits that that make their new rubber soles grippier.

But even the manufacturers of these boots don’t claim that you’ll get the same performance as you would with felt, and they don’t want their customers to get into trouble because of overconfidence in their new boots. Ned Hutchinson at Cloudveil told me that these boots should be seen as another option for anglers, an alternative to felt for some situations but not a complete replacement for felt. If you’re headed to fish for steelhead on a big Western river in February, don’t wear boots with unstudded rubber soles. However, for most streams, the studded versions of these boots work great. For light wading, uncomplicated riverbeds, or drift-boat fishing, the unstudded versions will do the trick. Orvis has decided to sell only studded versions of its feltless wading boot because, according to rod-and-tackle manager Steve Hemkens, “We don't want to jeopardize the safety of our customers by sending them out on the water without studs.”

The environmental impact of wearing these boots should also not be overstated. Just because you eschew felt does not make you some sort of environmental hero. Yes, rubber boot soles offer fewer nooks and crannies for aquatic nuisance species to attach to, but Hutchinson says it’s important that manufacturers and shop owners explain to anglers that simply wearing these boots is not enough. To stop aquatic hitchhikers such as whirling disease, new Zealand mud snails, or didymo, you must also clean and dry your gear completely before traveling from watershed to watershed.

For more information on what you should do to stop aquatic hitchhikers, visit the Trout Unlimited Aquatic Invasive Species page, and to learn more about how the different new feltless soles work, check out my article “Closer Look” in the January/February 2010 issue of American Angler.

Article Comments:

Excellent reality-check on this felt vs. rubber sole issue. I concur that maximum traction thus wading safety is achieved via carbide studded felt soles. It is hard for the average fly fisher to experiment, however, if anglers had the opportunity to shod one foot with felt and the other with sticky rubber and wade across a familiar section of river, the question of comparative grip would quickly be put to rest.

Of course, grip on river bottom structure is only part of the story here; environmental responsibility is, thankfully, a powerful ethic among fly fishers. There is no doubt that felt takes considerably longer than rubber to thoroughly dry increasing the comparative organism transport potential of one over the other. Most experienced anglers have no doubt noted visible larval and algal life clinging to their mesh boot uppers, laces, fabric covered neoprene gravel cuffs and wader booties and woven landing net bags. On fecund river systems like the upper Missouri, upper Delaware and all spring creeks, often virtually the entire submerged portion of ones wading gear is flecked with living residue. And this is just on your personal surfaces. How about the various water craft, professional drift boats and their mud-caked trailers that every day of the season are being re-immersed in all fish holding environments within driving distance of the guides' base camp...not to assign blame to us for transporting invasive species. Blame must include heron, osprey, pelican and who is keeping didymo off moose?

Leaving the moose aside and allowing us to purchase superior traction wading footwear without guilt; here is a modest, logical alterative: In addition to educating anglers in the role of gear cleansing to reduce the spread of deleterious organisms, lets campaign fly fishing club chapters, fly shops, outfitters and tackle manufacturers to supply cleansing troughs, benches and long-handled brushes at fishing access sites and boat ramps across the land. I know of at least one such set-up at the Nature Conservancy cabin on Idaho's Silver Creek. In this way we can behave responsibly - fisher, service and product suppliers in concert - and scrub potential piggy-backing organisms off more of our surface area than our boot's soles.

Richard Franklin, NYC