Soft baits for Fly Fishermen

In his 1960 classic Fishing the Nymph Jim Quick (in a discussion about exact immitation vs impressionistic fly design) writes: "The plastic replicas of nymphs, either formed in a mold or woven are in this class. To our eyes, they are perfection itself, but from a consensus of trout results reports, at this writing, the desirable keepers look upon this lure, under most conditions, as if it were tinged with arsenic. The reader may get the impression that the author, in asking that the fly fisherman or fly tier observe and study the natural nymph, is a bit off his rocker when he states that perfect lures are not too effective. It is true, and why it is that way nobody knows."
I may be taking Jim Quick a little out of context here. He was trying to make a point about "exact immitation" in general rather than molded plastic in particular. Still, in his day, there were no exact immitation molded plastic flies. In fact there were only a few real fly shops anywhere in those days. Stores like Jim Derren's Angler's Roost in New York, Wayne Buzek's shop in California or Dan Bailey's and Pat Barnes' shops in Montana were the exception rather than the rule. Abercrombie and Fitch, one of the best east coast sources of flies and expensive bamboo rods in the 1960s, sold as much or more spinning tackle as it did fly fishing gear. The molded plastic flies that did appear in fly bins in those days were more like opaquely colored cartoon caricatures of imaginary insects than exact immitations of anything real. I suspect Jim's quick disdain for molded plastic nymphs had more to do with predjudice than experience. In fact I find soft plastic nymphs--made with a few feathers and the same soft plastic bass worms are made from--to be the most astonishingly effective nymphs of all. When properly tied, a seductive combination of translucency flexibility and neutral bouyancy do in fact attract more initial strikes, while the soft squishy texture of the nymph itself tends to intitiate chewing rather than spitting behavior once the intitial strike has been made. My experience with soft plastic flies observes fish behavior more like a taste for caviar than arsenic.