If the whole breathable chest wader thing (BCW) is an issue for you, then please have a read of a recent blog post of mine here, because this is exactly where I am at with BCWs. I can’t do without them and I know what I need to spend to get a decent mix of performance and longevity. Unless you go for a pair of bootfoot waders (waders with boots already fitted to the end of them, like the Vass chest waders with what are literally welly boots “welded” onto them) then you are going to need to buy a pair of wading boots, or at least some kind of shoe or boot to put over the neoprene socks on the bottom of the BCWs. Again we are talking mainly about saltwater based shore fishing here, and again the whole wading boots thing is a bloody minefield. There are no hard and fast rules at all, but I have used enough boots on the end of my BCWs over many years now to at least be able to talk to you about them with a good degree of experience. You need to know that I am incredibly hard on shoes and boots, and I always have been. I used to go through hiking boots like you would not believe in my bait fishing days - I am no lightweight (wider but wiser?), I am 6’ tall, I walk fast, I walk a lot, I fish a fair amount over all kinds of terrain, and my footwear just doesn’t tend to like me very much. In a nutshell I have come to these conclusions with wading boots:

Saltwater and the ground a lot of us fish over hates wading boots - they are going to get trashed however well you look after them. Like with BCWs I can’t do without them though
Wading boots around the £100 mark which are often on offer together with a pair of BCWs are usually better suited to fishing than a sub-£40 pair of hiking or work boots, and usually the sub-£40 work boots last a lot longer
You could do a lot worse than buy a pair of sub-£40 hiking or work boots about three sizes over your normal shoe size, stick some Best-Grip wading studs from Supatracks in them, get as much use out of them as you can, and then buy again when they fall apart (you will be able to take the studs out and use these again in a new pair of boots) - check here and here for my thoughts and experiences doing just this
A lot of even the most expensive wading boots have components which will rust out with saltwater use (eyelets etc.), but they don’t tend to tell you this because technically wading boots are made for freshwater use, just like BCWs
Soles come away from the bottom of boots too much in the wading boot world for my liking, and I am guessing this is down to the boots obviously being used in and around water all the time
I haven’t yet come across a pair of removable/changeable sole wading boots which I like or which have lasted the course - they make a lot of sense, but so far they haven’t worked for me
I can’t see any point or need for the BOA lacing system in saltwater use, in fact I can’t see any point to the BOA system at all - laces work just fine so why use something which can fill up with sand and if it fails when you are out fishing you are screwed
The supplied laces tend to break fairly quickly on most wading boots though, and the best replacement is paracord around the 3mm size
Felt soles are great in rivers, but they are no good over wet grass and mud - go with rubber soles and stick studs in them

As with BCWs I dread to think how many pairs of wading boots I have used over the years, and also how many alternatives I have pressed into service as well. If there was a one-stop fits all solution I’d tell you about it, but there just isn’t. You can spend top dollar on high-end fly fishing wading boots and sometimes they last and last (the old Simms Rivershed wading boots, damn they were good), and sometimes they are a load of expensive crap (some of the Simms and Patagonia wading boots I have bought and managed to get refunded because they were so bad). As with BCWs I would advise that you don’t look for advice from the freshwater fly fishing world with wading boots, because as much as the Simms and Patagonias of this world might wax lyrical about some very expensive wading boots which are most likely supremely comfortable and lovely to wear, there is no way of knowing whether they will withstand saltwater use unless you can access first hand knowledge from somebody who has actually used them as you intend to - in saltwater. Saltwater kills most things, and wading boots are no exception. I had an old pair of Simms Guide boots for example that lasted and lasted and the eyelets never rusted out, so when it came time to replace them I obviously bought the newer version of the boots because I thought they would be even better again. What a mistake. The eyelets started rusting out almost immediately because some wading boot designer had gone and changed stuff for the worse.

Due to some bad experiences with their wading boots I have therefore shied away from anything Simms and Patagonia recently, so I am not the person to try and advise you on what might or might not work from their current lineups. I know how comfortable Simms wading boots tend to be, but I am not prepared to take an expensive gamble and find out that their eyelets aren’t up to it when they (annoyingly) used to be a few generations of wading boots ago. The only pair of high-end wading boots from the fly fishing world that I know of which do actually work properly in our world are the Orvis Pro wading boots. They are not cheap, but they are very comfortable and robust and they hold up really well. If you want a good pair of wading boots that offer lots of support and you are prepared to spend the money then it’s the Orvis Pro ones for me.

I was really liking the Vision Nahka wading boots for a good while last year, indeed they are supremely comfortable, but the eyelets eventually started to show signs of damage and then one snapped clean as I was doing up the laces one morning. The Vision Musta Michelin wading boots are so light and comfortable and for a while I thought they could be the ones, but I found a design flaw which would never have been picked up via testing in freshwater - sand comes in through the drainage holes and gets stuck inside the liner of the boot and over time you end up with sand “lumps” inside the boots. There is no way of getting the sand out and it keeps on building up. If you don’t fish on beaches then you may well be okay, because they are a seriously comfortable pair of wading boots to wear. I have come back to the Devil’s Canyon wading boots from Korkers time and time again, but try as I might I just don’t like them - not enough support when you are scrambling over rocks, I am not a fan of the replaceable soles but I want to be, and I can’t stand the BOA lacing system. Same with the Hodgman Aesis H-Lock boots - so, so comfortable, and again I was so close to loving them after a lot of use, but out of the blue the replaceable sole system went and failed on me and that was me done with the boots.

The Northern Diver Freestyle Safety Boots V2

I got on well with some of the canyoneering boots from FiveTen a few years ago, but I have found that specialist water boots with these “tacky” soles don’t tend to take studs very well, and as much as the blurb says the soles offer really good grip and on some surfaces they do, I feel a lot safer with studs in the soles of any boots I press into service for my fishing - beach fishing aside of course. The Northern Diver Freestyle Safety Boots V2 are supremely comfortable but again they don’t take studs very well. They are so easy to put on and take off, I can walk for miles in them, and I really like them if I am fishing where I don’t need studs - but they are not lasting a great deal longer than the Dunlop Safety boots I pressed into service for fishing. I have recently bought a pair of £39.99 Amblers FS006C Metal Free Safety Boots in size 14 from Screwfix to see how they might last when used as wading boots. I am a UK 11 shoe and the size 14 fit great with BCWs on. Because of the wading boots in the paragraph below, I might end up removing the studs from these Amblers work boots and using them as wading boots where studs are simply not needed.

The Scierra X-Force wading “shoe” with cleated soles

A few anglers who I know and trust have been telling me how good the Scierra X-Force wading boots are for their bass fishing, so I have secured a pair to try out. Helpfully they allow for BCW neoprene socks with their sizing - note that wading boot sizes can be tricky with some companies allowing for BCW neoprene socks and some which don’t - so I have gone for my UK shoe size with these X-Force boots and they fit really well. Mine are the “Cleated Sole” version which are rubber soles with a load of studs already in there. You need to know that Scierra is a part of Svendsen Sport which is also Savage Gear, so I have been able to get hold of these X-Force wading boots as part of my working with these people - but I don’t work with Scierra and I am nothing to do with these wading boots. None of the grownups have ever asked me to try them out, indeed it’s anglers who have put me onto them. Quite why Scierra call them a “wading shoe” instead of a “wading boot” is beyond me - lost in translation? - but I am going to give them a good thrashing and I will keep you posted. If there is one person who can find any faults in a pair of wading or hiking boots it’s me!

One thing I have yet to do is spend around that £100 mark on a pair of really good quality hiking boots and press them into service as wading boots. As I said above I have done so at the cheaper workboot end of the scale, but considering that around £100 for a pair of wading boots in my experience doesn’t tend to buy you much, £100 does buy a decent pair of hiking boots, and I do wonder how a decent pair of hiking boots might hold up to a life as wading boots. I have had a bit of correspondence from anglers in the past who have done just this sort of thing and they have told me how well their good quality hiking boots have worked as wading boots, but I am yet to take the gamble.

So how do you go about trying to look after a pair of wading boots? It might sound obvious to thoroughly wash them out in freshwater and dry them out properly after each time fishing in them, but if you are out fishing pretty regularly this isn’t very realistic. It is also much easier to put wet wading boots on and tighten them up around your feet that it is a dry pair, so to be perfectly honest my wading boots or whatever I am using as wading boots come back from fishing and tend to live outside the door and stay wet until the next time I go out fishing. I will always hose them out if I have collected any sand or grit in them because this is one surefire way to put a hole in the neoprene socks at the bottom of your BCWs. For sure I have trashed many pairs of BCWs over the years, but I genuinely can’t remember the last time a pair of neoprene socks sprung a leak on me, and I put this down to me always washing sand and grit out of my wading boots. If I have had to wash them out then they go back to sitting (wet) outside the door until I go fishing again, but if I am trying out a different pair of wading boots for a while then I will give them a good rinse in freshwater, properly dry them out, and keep them inside until they get pressed into service again. I like ankle support so I can’t tell you anything about pressing walking or work shoes into service as wading boots by the way.

So there you go. It is my hope that these “Let’s talk about” blog posts might help a few of you out, but at the end of the day it’s also a good way for me to collect some thoughts together and get them down on paper. Maybe it’s just me, but I get the impression that more and more anglers are either trying out lure fishing for bass, or at least expressing an interest in doing so. Take these blog posts for what they are and always remember that it’s my thinking and that there are so many different ways to do things. If I have missed an obvious trick with anything wading boot related then please tell me so in the comments section below. You all please stay safe…………...

Let’s talk about……wading boots, or what boots to wear with your BCWs

© Henry Gilbey 2023