When I established Voyageurs Fieldsport in 2023, my intent then as well as now was to stress the anthropology of hunting. In truth, I actually implied as much and a lot more in Voyageurs: The Inside Track, which is the very first page I developed when I began building the website, and once more in Voyageurs Fieldsport and the Roosevelt Ethos. But if you’ve read recent dispatches such as All’s Fair in Love and War, Pre-Christmas Crackers, and A Short Valentine’s Day Treatise on Male Strutting, then all of it really goes without saying. For you easily would have deduced that Voyageurs Fieldsport is cut from different cloth than the likes of say Field and Stream.
Now, I confess that my primary motivation for focusing on the anthropology of hunting is personal. Although instead of giving a lengthy explanation, I’ll simply use an analogy from which you will hopefully draw the correct inference: As much as I enjoy watching video of a predator such as a tiger on the hunt, I believe what’s most interesting is not the hunting of quarry but rather the tiger itself. I trust you see my point. But in the event you don’t, then know that whether it be deerstalking, fly-fishing, or even the greatest objet de la chasse of all (Boy meets girl, girl meets boy!), it’s the human being that’s most intriguing.1
Lucky Me
Certain occasions, however, warrant an article or a dispatch that is technical in nature and, fine, I’ll play the game. Now, I’ve never been one for studded snow tires. Even more, I’ve always forewent even regular snow tires because if you’ve either a four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicle with a manual transmission and you know how to use it, then a set of decent all-season radials is sufficient. But lucky me, I was driving through Saratoga Springs, New York the very end of May when my left rear tire picked-up a chassis bolt that had fallen off the clunker up ahead. Just look at that piece of metal shown in the photos below. The chassis bolt is so long that it struck the wheel. It’s a good thing the latter is made of steel. For it would have been destroyed if it was constructed of aluminum. But please note the details of that now modified molded and vulcanized band of rubber around it. Reminiscent of Crocodile Dundee, you have to admit that’s a studded tire!
And yet, I can’t be too casual about it. The tire is nearly new. Along with the other three, it went on my Subaru mid-March this year. Although if there’s a bright side, then it’s that I got away with replacing just it rather than all four as a consequence of it being so fresh from the factory. Had I previously switched out tires a month or so earlier, then the wear would have been too great for Subaru’s all-wheel drivetrain to tolerate the one being not like the others. Still, I dislike spending money and therefore I intend to recapture some of its once expected mileage in the form of euphemistic mileage by using the entire affair as flimsy pretext for this dispatch – a technical white paper addressing whether a fly-angler should stud rubber-soled wading boots. Studded tires, studded wading boots: Do you get it?
To Stud or Not to Stud?
Both New York and Maryland have received a lot of rain since mid-May. In the long term, it’s very much a positive development, especially for the latter as the mid-Atlantic region has been especially droughty these last several years. In the short term, though, it can make stream-wading difficult. For this reason, I invite you to think of my bad luck as something well-timed to address a question that nearly every fly-angler must answer. Speaking in the first person, it is this: Should I stud my wading boots?
To begin, nothing provides in-stream traction as good as felt. The problem with felt-soled wading boots, however, is that they are a vector for the transport of aquatic invasive species from one stream to the next. This is the reason why they are illegal in most places throughout the western world. In my view, though, a fly-angler has no business using a pair even where the law permits. For if you care about stream ecology, then you should pro-actively avoid the things that risk degradation.
That, of course, leaves cork or rubber-soled wading boots as the remaining options. Here, rubber is the way to go, and for several reasons. For the sake of brevity, though, I’ll express just two: Firstly, cork can’t tolerate bushwhacking on dry ground without unduly abrading away the sole and, secondly, its porous structure still makes it too easy for the fly-angler to unwittingly transport an aquatic hitchhiker from one stream to the next. Therefore, my advice is that you should opt for as premium a rubber-soled wading boot as your budget will allow. The more upmarket it is, the closer it will approximate the in-stream traction of felt.
So, now we reach the point where the rubber begins to meet the rock: Should you stud or not stud? The answer to the question depends on your most likely context. Do you fly-fish primarily streams wherein the rocky substrate is devoid of slippery algae-film or where the substrate is slick with it?
To begin, wading boot and automobile tire studs are both made of carbide steel, which is harder than not only tarmac but also even very refractory types of rock such as granite and porphyry. And – surprise – it’s also a lot harder than algae-film. Okay then, why does studding snow tires improve traction? It’s due, firstly, to carbide being harder than tarmac and, secondly, the car being heavy enough to push those studs into it. But what happens if you stand on a hunk of granite wearing studded wading boots? Yes, carbide is still the harder material. The problem, though, is that you do not weigh enough to push those studs into the rock. As a consequence, they actually disrupt contact between sole and surface and thus attenuate traction, lowering it below what would naturally exist if they were absent. But now the plot thickens. What if the granite is slicked with algae-film? Well, here you win half the battle. You weigh enough to push the carbide studs through the film to what’s underneath, thereby gaining purchase and thus increasing traction above that which naturally exists between sole and algae-film, but still not enough to penetrate the latter, which would improve traction all the more.
So this is the golden nugget. If you primarily fly-fish low-nutrient streams wherein the rocky substrate is devoid of slippery algae-film, then you should forego studding. For not only would studs generate sound waves of metal scraping against rock that alert fish, they would again also attenuate contact between your wading boots’ rubber soles and the substrate thereby reducing traction. Yet, if you primarily fly-fish higher nutrient streams wherein the rocks are slick with algae-film, then stud them up to penetrate through to what’s underneath. Oh sure, you may scare a few trout as you wade along, but you will enjoy improved traction relative to that gained from straight rubber on algae-film alone.
A Closing Remark
A word of caution, though. Once studs go in, they must stay in. The reason is that if you remove them for the sake of one stream only to reattach them later on, they will not hold because the small, imbedded HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) blocks into which they are screwed will be too reamed out to grip the threading. Therefore, be decisive. Or alternatively, buy yourself two pairs of wading boots, and stud-up the one but not the other. Yes, I recognize that it’s easy spending money these days with the price of fuel being so high. But purchasing two pairs is a viable, albeit costly, option. Just don’t waste a nearly new tire on a thrown chassis bolt. That’s such a stupid thing to do.
- There is also a secondary reason underlying Voyageurs’ anthropological bent. The reality is that the market for fieldsports media that addresses the ‘How To’ is quite saturated. It’s everywhere. Therefore, what good would it do if the company website consisted mostly of technical white papers? It simply wouldn’t pay. ↩︎