I’m not sure why I waited so long to try spikes in my wading boots. I suppose it’s because felt was always enough. But now, with states banning felt and companies dropping felt from their boot line-ups, I wanted to take another look at some sort of spikes or slip-on alternatives.
Luckily, I ran into the guys from Goat Head Gear over on Twitter! You really should try to get in on the Twitter craze. Once you start following great outdoors folk over there, lots of cool stuff can happen! So anyway, I ran into Goat Head Gear tweeting about their Sole Spikes, which are aftermarket screw-in spikes that can make almost any footwear more …well,……grippy. I asked them if they’d let us do a review and they sent us a complete set to try out. Remember, before you read further: This is OwlJones.com. We don’t do paid reviews and we don’t pull punches. If something stinks, we’ll tell ya how much. OK, read on…
I remember back in 1989 or so thinking “Felt? Felt? How is that going to help?” and I guess I should admit I was the same way about spikes. Metal spikes. How could that possibly help? Well, let me tell you about my day two days ago.
After “crunching” my way down the gravel road, I stepped into one of the slickest streams I know. One that has the worst rocks and ledges and cuts deep into the riverbed. This is the Amicalola River, near Dawsonville, GA. It’s probably my least favorite trout stream in the world, and the difficult wading conditions are part of my reasoning on that. On this day, the river was high and cloudy from recent rains.
The slippery and often fishless Amicalola River.
I stepped on a rock. “OK, that feels ok.” I stepped across to another rock. “Ok. So far so good.” Then, I got stupid. I thought “Alright, let’s put these things to the test…” and I took a leap over a break in the rocks where the river had carved out a short-cut. My front foot landed on the rock and slid 3 inches. I caught myself with my back foot but the current got it and drug it under as the toe ( where I didn’t have a spike) slipped on a slanted, slick shelf. I knew I’d pushed too hard – that much weight moving in a lateral direction at speed…nothing could hold that…
And that’s when the Sole Spikes saved my fat butt. My back foot kept sliding until it hit a large, round, equally-as-slick underwater boulder about the size of a basketball. The Sole Spikes dug in and despite the water rushing straight into my leg, held my foot in place. I leaned forward, almost lying on the rocks in front of me and pulled my leg from the flow. Had the Sole Spikes not been on that boot, I have no doubt that the rush of water would have pulled me into the flow and deposited me into the 8 ft. deep pool waiting below me.
Goat Head Gear's Sole Spikes
Now, it wasn’t that cold that day – maybe 55 degrees or so and I was parked pretty close by. But it wasn’t hypothermia that worried me. It was the story we all heard a few years ago when a fellow angler in NC turned up at the bottom of one such hole. A sad day for everyone involved and a lesson for everyone that wades freestone rivers. In the future, I won’t let testing any product override my common sense. Obviously, I’m glad I had the Sole Spikes in place.
You could say I’m alot more than a big fan, now.
As for the other things you might be interested in – the spikes go on really easily. Just screw ‘em in. I used an electric drill and if you do this, just make sure and don’t over tighten them and cause them to “spin” in the hole you’re making. They come in minimal packaging, and the container would make a good way to send flies through the mail to a friend or for a fly swap – so it’s easy to recycle the packaging.
For $20 you can turn almost any boot or shoe into a more stable platform for your outdoor activities. Our Owlhead Review Chart? Yeah, we still have that. We give ‘em our highest possible rating. That’s right, Five Owls.
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The day that I put studs on the bottom of my boots was the day that my fly fishing got serious. Ha! Honestly, I was always so careful with where I went to drop a line in, not to slip on the moss, rocks and snow. Now, I can go pretty much anywhere! Best investment so far. Glad you did it as well…
Me too!
You’re missing something and I won’t buy it until I get answers.
Next time put simple screws in one boot and these spikes in the other. Then tell me what the difference is.
Ask them Clif – they will probably send you some to try out. Trust me, the heads on these things (or any screw in cleat I’ve ever seen) are not like the rounded heads on screws from Lowe’s. I really don’t think you can find screws like this is a hardware store and even if you did – would they hold up to the kind of abuse that screw-in cleats do? I just don’t know whether they would or not, and I’m not going to trust my safety to something I rigged up from the hardware dept. Ya know?
I screwed in a bunch of hex-head sheet metal screws to my Vibram sole boots, and it does make a difference. They work fine, and if they get worn out I’ll spring for another package at $1.89 or whatever.
More important than studs, though, is a sturdy staff. I won’t go most places without one.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t work. I’m saying they aren’t the same. The ones designed for wading are cut very differently from regular sheet metal screws. Maybe we should have a Grip-Off.
Nice tenkara blog you have there. I didn’t know it won a tournament somewhere.
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