Felt or no Felt

It seems like some states are talking again about banning felt sole boots. The idea is to prevent the spread of Aquatic Invasive Species. It seems to me that anyone or anything wading into water could potentially spread AIS's. Even if a person were to wade with Vibram soles would not the boot be soaked inside and out? What about if a reel were to get wet, would not the backing and line be potential carriers. What about swimmers, people floating, or accidential swimmers? Is this a push buy boot makers? What are your opions and thoughts?

My opinion is that if felt soles are somehow banned, everything else that is placed in the water related to fishing will have to be banned also. That doesn't leave much that we use for that purpose.

hardhat, i don't think anyone has weighed in yet because this topic has been done to death. But not to worry...i don't seem to be able to post much without my vast following chiming in, usually and prolly rightly so, in the opposite direction as i take. I test this theory on my wonderful wife all the time. To boil it down, if i say 'night', she'll say 'day'. You get the picture and wifey admits she does that just to make me crazy. Worked too.

Cheers,

MontanaMoose

Cheers,

MontanaMoose

They've banned felt soles here in New Zealand in response to Didymo. The arguement is that, although yes, things like the boots and reels, etc, also can transmit didymo (in this case) they are also relatively easy to treat. Dry them out for 48 hours, or wash them in warm soapy (dish detergent) water, and that does it. As long as you take care of things between water systems, you can greatly reduce the spread of didymo from one to the other this way, except for the didymo in the felt. When you walk along the river bottom, it gets pushed into the felt soles, which can stay wet enough to keep it alive well beyond 48 hours (apparently) but more importantly, keeps it safe from the washing routine when you go from one water system to another.

Ok, but there's no ban on hiker's wearing wool socks as they go through a moutain range. That would do the same thing. No ban on boats, who's engines transmit water, etc. Here, only the anglers were targeted. I think in part because anglers tend to be concerned about such things, so in order to make it look like something is being done, we had our felt boots banned. I wouldn't mind anglers having to do our part, if our part wasn't the only part being done.

- Jeff