Not sure if I am allowed to paste this here... 
Found this an interesting read.
http://www.sportfishafrica.co.za/default.asp
SOFT PLASTICS: There's A Storm On Your Horizon
BY Charles Norman for Tight Lines
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When Rapala’s roving global promotions lady Sirpa Glad-Staf (and who wouldn’t have a glad-staf, with that a job like that?) was in South Africa last year she told me that the company would be putting out a range of soft plastic baits this year that would knock anglers’ socks off. She was certainly right, though the lures in question are not coming out under the Rapala name, but rather under that of Storm.
How, you may wonder, does that happen? Quite simple, really. Rapala have owned the American Storm Lures company for several years, and the decision to market their new range of soft plastic baits under that label was a strategic one, partly to give them added leverage into the American market, but also to provide a little more flexibility in their range of lures.
Rapala, a huge and long reputation behind them. Rapala don’t take risks, they don’t do anything a little off the edge, they virtually don’t market anything new until it has become a respectable older citizen. And they don’t produce soft plastic baits.
For over 70 years they have made only hard baits that are still primarily of balsa wood, though they do these days have a few hard plastic lures as well.
Rapala, in fact, are a little staid, very conscious of their image and their role in the history of artificial lures. Storm have a totally different attitude, as their motto of “think like a fish, no matter how weird it gets,†makes clear from the moment you encounter these lures. Many Storm lures at first glance seem a lot like conventional Rapalas anyway, except that they are not made of balsa – their Wiggle Wart and Chug Bug are well known in the bass world, and their Deep Thunder is taking plenty big tuna up in Kenya right now.
But soft plastic baits have never been part of the Rapala image, so when Rapala two years ago bought the Willtech Plastic factory in China, in the process almost quadrupling their workforce by adding Willtech’s 3 000 employees to the 1 200 at Rapala’s headquarters in Vaaksy, Finland, it was only logical that their first offerings of soft plastic baits would be under the Storm label rather than that of Rapala.
In entering the highly competitive soft plastics market, Rapala knew that for the first time in their 65 year existence they were entering a field where they were not the leader. The first release of these new products must have been an anxious moment back at Rapala headquarters in Finland.
Well, nothing to worry about there. Sirpa Glad-Staff was right -- these new Storm soft plastic baits, rigged with super-sharp VMC hooks and marketed in South Africa by Bantam Distributors of Johannesburg, are just plain awesome.
The first job of any lure, obviously, is to catch the angler, because until it’s done that it hasn’t much hope of ever catching a fish. In that department, Storm’s soft plastics are winners before they ever leave the tackle store.
Made from very soft, salt and aniseed-impregnated plastics, virtually all of them have rattles incorporated in the lure. Shake one next to your ear, and you can faintly hear the rattle. A gimmick? No, there’s no doubt that rattles in lures have been one of the most important innovations in the past two decades – a fish can hear much further than it can often see, and sound is so magnified underwater that even pinhead-sized steel beads in a small glass vial will get the attention of a hunting predator.
Then there’s the “Wild-Eye†featured in all of Storm’s soft plastic minnows. Again, there’s no doubt that eyes are a major trigger in a predator deciding whether to strike or not, and the lifelike eyes in the whole range of Storm’s Swim Shad range, from the huge 23 cm, six ounce/168 gm model rigged with two large single VMC hooks right down to the little half-ounce 7 cm version, move so realistically as the lure swims that it’s very easy to see any predator saying: “Hullo, breakfast …â€
The “eyes†are actually a single black bead set inside clear plastic, which gives the amazing effect of movement when you move the lure from side to side; in fact, the “eye†seems to follow you, just as the eye of a potential meal would follow the predator about to nail it.
These Swim Shad and Swim Bait lures also feature internal weights. Now I for one have fished soft plastic minnow lures for many years and have often experimented with trying to get weights inside them, partly so that the outline of the lure isn’t broken by a sinker on the line, but also so that when a fish crunches down on the bait it feels softness rather than metal beneath its jaws.
My own experiments have been amateurish to say the least, but Storm have succeeded brilliantly in casting (if that’s the right word for plastics?) these lures around an internal leadhead, so that the lure is heavy enough for easy casting yet there’s no sign or feel of a weight. And the weight is set forward, almost under the throat of the plastic minnow, so that if you bump it along the bottom and then stop it, the lure will sit upright in a nose-down, tail-up attitude, just begging to be slurped up.
Add the paddle tail so familiar from early Mr Twister Sassy Shad lures – nothing swims as realistically as that tail – plus a salt-impregnated body and internal holographic foil to give the bait flash, and you’ve really got something special here.
My fishing horizons recently have got no further than bass, but the smaller Swim Shads have certainly proved themselves against these fish – and I particularly like the Suspending Wildeye Swim Shad, which swims only about 20 cm beneath the surface but (as you would expect from its name) suspends in midwater when you stop the retrieve. Bantam’s Andrew Catchpole tells me that a lipped version of this incredibly lifelike, and alive-feeling, little lure is coming out next, which will take it down to a depth of a metre or so. Can’t wait to knot one of those onto the line!
There was never any doubt that fish other than bass would find these Swim Shads equally attractive, and on a recent visit to the Zambezi Andrew was successful on both tigerfish and yellow-belly bream with the smaller wildeyes. He also showed me a 15 cm, two-ounce/57 gm one that required a bit of surgical work with sutures and plastic-welding to get it back into the firing line after a tussle with a big tiger.
The bigger versions have been equally successful against tarpon in West Africa – in fact, they’re the “secret weapon†at the new Rio Longa Lodge in Angola – and we recently had clients on Lake Nasser in Egypt who had great success on Nile perch by casting the 15 cm model towards shore from their boat, and then “hopping†it down the rocky ledges into deep water until the inevitable happened. (Those same clients also caught a 7.2 kg tigerfish in Lake Nasser on the same lure, which is unusually big for those parts.)
I’ve written mostly about the Swim Shad series, and these are definitely the ones that have caught my attention. But Storm also produces a wide variety of other soft plastic lures, all salt-impregnated, most with that internal rattle, and many incorporating holographic foil for flash.
These include other minnow-type lures such as the Wildeye Curl Tail Minnow, Rippin’ Minnow, Split Tail Minnow and Finesse Minnow, some pre-rigged with VMC hooks (French hookmakers VMC now also being part of Rapala), plus more conventional designs such as the proven Rattle Lizards, Rattle Ribbon Tail Worm, Rattle Fry Worm, and a Rattle Tube Bait.
There are Rattle Shrimps and even a Wildeye Hair Squid Jig, which doesn’t rattle but has a leadhead body with that Wildeye encased in soft, see-through plastic, and which will certainly prove irresistible so any saltwater fish which eats squid – in other words, any saltwater fish.
The salt is the next big frontier for these soft plastic minnow lures. Species such as kingfish and ‘couta will find these lifelike baits hard to resist. We’re a little behind the rest of the world when it comes to fishing soft plastics in the salt, but I know of tuna anglers down in Cape Town (they don’t want their names revealed and would rather I didn’t even mention this!) who are having great success on yellowfin with the 15 cm, two ounce model.
And rather to my surprise, for these SwimShads are made from very soft plastic and one would imagine hits from large, toothy fish doing them great damage, these Cape anglers are saying that they are managing several tuna on each lure before it becomes so battered that they have to tie a new one on.
And even then, with a little careful “plastic welding†over a candle at the kitchen table, these battle-scarred warriors can often be given a new lease of life and sent back into the fight again.
Found this an interesting read.http://www.sportfishafrica.co.za/default.asp
SOFT PLASTICS: There's A Storm On Your Horizon
BY Charles Norman for Tight Lines
[align=center][size=
][/size][/align]
When Rapala’s roving global promotions lady Sirpa Glad-Staf (and who wouldn’t have a glad-staf, with that a job like that?) was in South Africa last year she told me that the company would be putting out a range of soft plastic baits this year that would knock anglers’ socks off. She was certainly right, though the lures in question are not coming out under the Rapala name, but rather under that of Storm.
How, you may wonder, does that happen? Quite simple, really. Rapala have owned the American Storm Lures company for several years, and the decision to market their new range of soft plastic baits under that label was a strategic one, partly to give them added leverage into the American market, but also to provide a little more flexibility in their range of lures.
Rapala, a huge and long reputation behind them. Rapala don’t take risks, they don’t do anything a little off the edge, they virtually don’t market anything new until it has become a respectable older citizen. And they don’t produce soft plastic baits.
For over 70 years they have made only hard baits that are still primarily of balsa wood, though they do these days have a few hard plastic lures as well.
Rapala, in fact, are a little staid, very conscious of their image and their role in the history of artificial lures. Storm have a totally different attitude, as their motto of “think like a fish, no matter how weird it gets,†makes clear from the moment you encounter these lures. Many Storm lures at first glance seem a lot like conventional Rapalas anyway, except that they are not made of balsa – their Wiggle Wart and Chug Bug are well known in the bass world, and their Deep Thunder is taking plenty big tuna up in Kenya right now.
But soft plastic baits have never been part of the Rapala image, so when Rapala two years ago bought the Willtech Plastic factory in China, in the process almost quadrupling their workforce by adding Willtech’s 3 000 employees to the 1 200 at Rapala’s headquarters in Vaaksy, Finland, it was only logical that their first offerings of soft plastic baits would be under the Storm label rather than that of Rapala.
In entering the highly competitive soft plastics market, Rapala knew that for the first time in their 65 year existence they were entering a field where they were not the leader. The first release of these new products must have been an anxious moment back at Rapala headquarters in Finland.
Well, nothing to worry about there. Sirpa Glad-Staff was right -- these new Storm soft plastic baits, rigged with super-sharp VMC hooks and marketed in South Africa by Bantam Distributors of Johannesburg, are just plain awesome.
The first job of any lure, obviously, is to catch the angler, because until it’s done that it hasn’t much hope of ever catching a fish. In that department, Storm’s soft plastics are winners before they ever leave the tackle store.
Made from very soft, salt and aniseed-impregnated plastics, virtually all of them have rattles incorporated in the lure. Shake one next to your ear, and you can faintly hear the rattle. A gimmick? No, there’s no doubt that rattles in lures have been one of the most important innovations in the past two decades – a fish can hear much further than it can often see, and sound is so magnified underwater that even pinhead-sized steel beads in a small glass vial will get the attention of a hunting predator.
Then there’s the “Wild-Eye†featured in all of Storm’s soft plastic minnows. Again, there’s no doubt that eyes are a major trigger in a predator deciding whether to strike or not, and the lifelike eyes in the whole range of Storm’s Swim Shad range, from the huge 23 cm, six ounce/168 gm model rigged with two large single VMC hooks right down to the little half-ounce 7 cm version, move so realistically as the lure swims that it’s very easy to see any predator saying: “Hullo, breakfast …â€
The “eyes†are actually a single black bead set inside clear plastic, which gives the amazing effect of movement when you move the lure from side to side; in fact, the “eye†seems to follow you, just as the eye of a potential meal would follow the predator about to nail it.
These Swim Shad and Swim Bait lures also feature internal weights. Now I for one have fished soft plastic minnow lures for many years and have often experimented with trying to get weights inside them, partly so that the outline of the lure isn’t broken by a sinker on the line, but also so that when a fish crunches down on the bait it feels softness rather than metal beneath its jaws.
My own experiments have been amateurish to say the least, but Storm have succeeded brilliantly in casting (if that’s the right word for plastics?) these lures around an internal leadhead, so that the lure is heavy enough for easy casting yet there’s no sign or feel of a weight. And the weight is set forward, almost under the throat of the plastic minnow, so that if you bump it along the bottom and then stop it, the lure will sit upright in a nose-down, tail-up attitude, just begging to be slurped up.
Add the paddle tail so familiar from early Mr Twister Sassy Shad lures – nothing swims as realistically as that tail – plus a salt-impregnated body and internal holographic foil to give the bait flash, and you’ve really got something special here.
My fishing horizons recently have got no further than bass, but the smaller Swim Shads have certainly proved themselves against these fish – and I particularly like the Suspending Wildeye Swim Shad, which swims only about 20 cm beneath the surface but (as you would expect from its name) suspends in midwater when you stop the retrieve. Bantam’s Andrew Catchpole tells me that a lipped version of this incredibly lifelike, and alive-feeling, little lure is coming out next, which will take it down to a depth of a metre or so. Can’t wait to knot one of those onto the line!
There was never any doubt that fish other than bass would find these Swim Shads equally attractive, and on a recent visit to the Zambezi Andrew was successful on both tigerfish and yellow-belly bream with the smaller wildeyes. He also showed me a 15 cm, two-ounce/57 gm one that required a bit of surgical work with sutures and plastic-welding to get it back into the firing line after a tussle with a big tiger.
The bigger versions have been equally successful against tarpon in West Africa – in fact, they’re the “secret weapon†at the new Rio Longa Lodge in Angola – and we recently had clients on Lake Nasser in Egypt who had great success on Nile perch by casting the 15 cm model towards shore from their boat, and then “hopping†it down the rocky ledges into deep water until the inevitable happened. (Those same clients also caught a 7.2 kg tigerfish in Lake Nasser on the same lure, which is unusually big for those parts.)
I’ve written mostly about the Swim Shad series, and these are definitely the ones that have caught my attention. But Storm also produces a wide variety of other soft plastic lures, all salt-impregnated, most with that internal rattle, and many incorporating holographic foil for flash.
These include other minnow-type lures such as the Wildeye Curl Tail Minnow, Rippin’ Minnow, Split Tail Minnow and Finesse Minnow, some pre-rigged with VMC hooks (French hookmakers VMC now also being part of Rapala), plus more conventional designs such as the proven Rattle Lizards, Rattle Ribbon Tail Worm, Rattle Fry Worm, and a Rattle Tube Bait.
There are Rattle Shrimps and even a Wildeye Hair Squid Jig, which doesn’t rattle but has a leadhead body with that Wildeye encased in soft, see-through plastic, and which will certainly prove irresistible so any saltwater fish which eats squid – in other words, any saltwater fish.
The salt is the next big frontier for these soft plastic minnow lures. Species such as kingfish and ‘couta will find these lifelike baits hard to resist. We’re a little behind the rest of the world when it comes to fishing soft plastics in the salt, but I know of tuna anglers down in Cape Town (they don’t want their names revealed and would rather I didn’t even mention this!) who are having great success on yellowfin with the 15 cm, two ounce model.
And rather to my surprise, for these SwimShads are made from very soft plastic and one would imagine hits from large, toothy fish doing them great damage, these Cape anglers are saying that they are managing several tuna on each lure before it becomes so battered that they have to tie a new one on.
And even then, with a little careful “plastic welding†over a candle at the kitchen table, these battle-scarred warriors can often be given a new lease of life and sent back into the fight again.