Here in East Tennessee, we are lucky to have a vast majority of fishing options within a short drive. Because of the diversity of fishing conditions, finding the right type of wading boot is one of the toughest decisions that an East Tennessee Angler has to make. For the past 6 months, I’ve been wearing a pair of versatile boots that can make the decision a little easier.

For starters, I am convinced that the Smoky Mountains are the slickest place on the planet to try and catch a trout. Anyone that has tried to navigate the angled, Vaseline-covered ice sheets of bedrock in Abrams Creek knows exactly what I’m talking about. For that reason, I would venture to say that at least 90% of anglers in the Smokies wear felt-soled wading boots. A big portion of our customers like to hike way into the backcountry to fish (I’m looking at you James Locke and Mr. Medlen). Not only can hiking in your felt boots reduce their lifespan, I have found that it also fills the felt with dirt and then compresses it to make a surface much slicker than clean felt. For that reason, some guys will walk into their favorite backcountry stream wearing hiking boots, and then fill their backpack with their felt-soled wading boots.

For all of you tailwater fisherman, the bottom of your rivers can be a bit more forgiving, but I would be lying if I said I hadn’t slipped and filled my waders with frigid water from the Clinch. As some of you know, the Clinch River has Didymo, also known as “rock snot”, and the Smoky Mountains do not. The jury is still out on what actually causes Didymo to show up in a river. Prevention is the best medicine, and regardless of what you have read, I think we should all take the cautious road and make sure that we are doing our best to prevent the spread of organisms from one stream to another, but that is a topic for another day.  Many tailwater anglers opt for rubber-soled wading boots. Studs are becoming more and more popular, and all I will say about studs on a wading boot is, “don’t knock it until you try it”. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I added studs to a pair of felt wading boots.

To make matters more complicated, a lot of fisherman enjoy fishing out of a boat; whether they are floating in a drifter or raft, or chasing warmwater fish on the lakes. I fish out of a boat quite a bit in the winter time, but I’m sure my invites to go float with my buddies would decline sharply if I took a few steps into their boats with studded boots. It is a pain having to remove and replace studs every time I get in a boat in the winter.

When choosing footwear, additional consideration must also be taken by the traveling angler. As some of you know, felt soles are currently banned in 7 states in the U.S., including the popular fly fishing states of Alaska and Vermont. 

With all that being said, for the past 6 months I have been wearing a pair of boots made by Korkers. Korkers came onto the scene years ago with their revolutionary system of being able to change the soles on your wading boots. What a great idea! However, for a period of time, the usefulness of the system was overshadowed by what some would call “sub-par quality”.

After all, the fly fishing industry has spent years and years trying to figure out how to make sure that the soles don’t fall off of a wading boot at the most inappropriate time.  Surely there would be some complications from trying to create a system sturdy enough for hiking and rock hopping, but also simple enough to switch out the soles quickly and easily. After years of work, it seems that Korkers has worked out the kinks in their boot design.