White River Fly Shop ® ECO-CLEAR Wading Boots

Well, I’m back for a second review of a new product I used for the Utah trip with the gang from fishingeuphoria.com. I was short on time to get a wading boot to go with the Simms L2 waders I reviewed earlier. I wanted to stay away from the felt-bottomed boots since many places are starting to disallow the felt-bottomed boots, all together. Again, the local BassPro Shop here in Las Vegas had a limited supply to choose from, and I definately did not want to order “blind” from the catalog without trying them on with my new waders.

So, I took my new Simms waders with me, a few days before we were set to leave, over to the BassPro Shop and went about looking for a lugged sole wading boot that felt comfortable and had a nice-sized footprint. I tried on several boots with varying degrees of comfort and a wide price range. I certainly didn’t want to scrimp on the comfort and useability, and I had an eye on something that would be useable for a long time. I wear a size 9 to size 9 1/2 shoe with a wider than average insole since I have a bit of a flat foot. When I tried on the White River Eco-clear boot in a size 9, I knew right away I had found what I was looking for. They sized to exactly what I wear in most street shoes without having the go one shoe size higher to compensate for the wading sock. If you wear a size ten shoot/boot, you just pick out the same size for the White River boots.

I found them to be very comfortable with enough flex and give in the body construction to make them “useable” right away, without a “break-in” period. The lace-ups in the upper part of the boot were nice in that you can easily adjust the tension. The lake bed we went into at Aspen Mirror lake in Utah was about 6 inches of soft mud with a huge top layer of thick, underwater grass. You could barely pull-out of the muck on each step, but I never came remotely close to losing a boot nor did I have the laces loosen-up to the point where I had to re-tie them. For a flexible construction like these, I was positive I’d have a problem in the 25+ hours we fished there but that never was the case.

I also did a fair amount of hiking to different locations and never developed a blister, hot-spot, or felt like I needed to take them off. The steel toe came in handy with the steep, rocky terrain we traveled over along the Mammoth creek stream. At $89.99 I felt like I got every pennies worth out of them. They were flexible enough to accomodate varying thicknesses of socks, stayed on my feet in some really challenging lake bottom conditions, and rugged enough to withstand tough rocky terrain on long hikes. Probably the best feature I got from them was that I didn’t have any “break-in” period but, instead, was able to use them for 3 days of hardcore fishing right out of the box without any problems whatsoever.

If your budget is under $100 bucks and/or you need a wider foot sized wading boot, I highly recommend you try on a pair of the White River Fly Shop Eco-Clear boots.