Soft plastics found their origins in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with small worms and grubs being moulded from hard rubber. The stiff rubber used, as well as the basic shapes produced, did not allow the flexible action and effectiveness of modern soft plastics to be observed. In 1972, lure manufacturer http://www.mepps.com/mistertwister/ - Mister Twister patented the Curly Tail^� concept, utilising the flexibility of silicon-based plastic to create a rubber lure with a more lifelike action and vastly improved fish-catching effectiveness. By the early to mid 1980s, high sales volumes of Mister Twister lures prompted many new entrants into the market, with competition soon leading to a broad and diverse selection of soft plastic lures being made available in a range of shapes, colours and sizes.

The diversity of soft plastic lures has enabled them to be used in many configurations, rigs and with various techniques. The original, and still most commonly seen use of soft plastics is as a simple lure, using a weighted hook known as a http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jighead - jighead . The hook of the jighead is threaded through the lure so that only the gape of the hook, and the eye, are exposed. Methods vary according to the shape of the plastic used, however is it most often cast and retrieved with short, sharp jerky motions applied by the angler through flicking the fishing rod tip. Experienced soft plastic anglers attempt to emulate the natural movement of the animal the soft plastic imitates, such as a prawn, baitfish or crawdad.

Soft plastics are also trolled and jigged in the same method as metal or hardbodied lures, and used as artificial baits in classic real-bait rigs. The many rigs, techniques and uses of soft plastic lures are as varied as the designs, colours and sizes they are available in. Specialised techniques and rigging methods have evolved from anglers targetting specific fish species or in particular areas, such as the Texas rig and Carolina rig.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carolina-rig.jpg - - - - - - - -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carolina-rig.jpg -

The Carolina Rig. Various soft plastic fishing rigs and methods have evolved through anglers targetting specific fish species

And lastly

Silicon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet - IPA : /ˈsɪlikən/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_language - Latin : silicium) is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element - chemical element that has the symbol Si and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number - atomic number 14. A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetravalent - tetravalent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalloid - metalloid , silicon is less reactive than its chemical analog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon - carbon . As the eighth most common element in the universe by mass, silicon occasionally occurs as the pure free element in nature, but is more widely distributed in dusts, planetoids and planets as various forms of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_dioxide - silicon dioxide or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicate - silicate . On Earth, silicon is the second most abundant element (after http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen - Silicon has many industrial uses. Elemental silicon is the principal component of most http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor - semiconductor devices, most importantly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuits - integrated circuits or microchips. Silicon is widely used in semiconductors because it remains a semiconductor at higher temperatures than the semiconductor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanium - germanium and because its http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivation - native oxide is easily grown in a furnace and forms a better semiconductor/dielectric interface than almost all other material combinations.