Quote Originally Posted by fishin' fool View Post
I have a pair of Simms boots with the same Vibram sole that you just purchased. While I wouldn't say that they allow my boot to stick to the rocks or that they're as good as felt with studs, they work better than I thought they would. I have only one suggestion for you and your desire to try them out on rivers that are tougher to wade, STUDS. I can say from personal experience that on rivers with bowling ball rocks and any slickness to them you will definately want a set of the carbide studs installed in the boot, especially if you are accustomed to felt. The vibram soles simply do not provide the same level of traction.
As I mentioned, I'm not sure I'll be putting studs in these boots because I have already have other pairs of boots with studs in them. However, I should also have mentioned that a rather nice feature of the G4's is (Simms claims) you can repeatedly insert and remove studs from the soles of these boots. The Vibram is elastic enough that it fills in the holes when the studs are removed, and provides enough grip to hold them in place when they are reinserted. So, you should be able to use these boots with or without studs whenever or whereever you wish. (Since I haven't done this myself though, I'd like to see this done in actual fishing conditions over a period of time to see how long they would hold up doing this, and how many studs you might loose over time.)