Silicone vs. Living Rubber skirt materials

[toppwatr]

Since i'm starting to make my own jigs i thought i would ask which skirt material is better to use with the jigs. Do you prefer living rubber or silicone skirt material?
basically im deciding between this- http://www.lurecraft.com/catalog.cfm...ng-rubber:1069

or this- http://www.lurecraft.com/catalog.cfm...irt-layers:861

let me know what you think
thanks

[walkeraviator]

From what i understand living rubber is better action, but silicone gives you better color selection. But that is the limit of my knowledge.

[Raul]

I like living rubber over silicone all the time, specially round strands of living rubber, for bouyancy ( which means greater volume as the skirt flares out ) rubber can´t be beat, unfortunately if you are a color fan the selection of colors in living rubber is limited, plus the colors are pretty sad ( dull ), I don´t care much since most of my jigs are black. So besides the color selection silicone definately is better than living rubber in the durability department, rubber dries out and becomes brittle and breaks with time, problem that also I don´t care much about because jigs don´t have a long life in my hands ( you have no idea how many I loose on the first cast , but as they say, if you ain´t casting them where they can hang up and get lost ---> you ain´t feesin where the fish are )

[BrownHL]

I have often read where some pros use combination skirts - both materials.

[HarveysMinnow]

I wish I had a clear understanding of what "Living rubber" actually is. I tried a search which produced a patent on one form of living rubber,

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5347028.html

but it had a lot more chemistry than most of us will want to know.

Another search on "silicone rubber" yielded this summary,

http://www.azom.com/Details.asp?Arti...es_of_Silicone

which had some interesting facts about how they make it, but again too much chemistry.

On the issue of rubber drying out and becomming brittle, some of that 'line conditioner' sprayed on the skirts once in a while might help there. Anyone ever tried it for this purpose ?

/

[Raul]

Rubber becomes brittle because it looses moisture, also, being organic is subject to decay and suceptible to degradation by ozone & UV rays, so the worst enemies of rubber are exposure to the elements, line conditioners don´t help, the best friend of rubber is storing it in a cool, not too dry, dark & ozone free environment; that way it lasts a long time.

[3dkicker]

There are companies that make silicone skirts that have the properties of the old rubber skirts but without the material melting or sticking to itself. They are round or flat too. Colors are pretty good but not as good as the normal silicone skirts.

[Solidbad]

I prefer silicone skirts to the "living rubber" skirts. The only advantage to the rubber skirts is that they supposedly have a more natural and attractive look to the bass, which I guess is the most important thing, but I disagree that they do have better action. In my opinion, silicone is better all around.
Hope this helps!

[DVT Mike]

Living Rubber Co sells Lumaflex which I think is a spandex material. Makes great skirts for jigs and spinner baits. A little pricey but has an action all its own.

[doc]

So, do you Living rubber users trim your mop jigs?

[MallenManson]

No experience with making jigs. With spinnerbaits I use silicone, but that's strictly because I like the colors and price of the skirts I use.

There's some people on here that make and sell jigs, they'll probably chime in, I'm sure

[lilmule]

Silicone has more possibilites with say multi colored spinnerbait skirts than living rubber,in plain white the living rubber is a good skirt.
Oddly in a jig skirt,the old color brown that resembles chocolate milk with a slight purple tinge is tops on Ky lake,just hard to find.
Living rubber multi colors are generally one band of one color then another band over that,while they work somewhat restricts the color options,compared to single strands of many colors inserted in a band for silicone.This is primarily with skirt material one can buy to assemble with,someone may well be making some with more realistic or more mixed colors dunno.
Living rubber also lends itself to a smaller presentation as does not flare out as much.
The colors are also more solid than opaque,making some things very hard to duplicate as with silicone.
I have the living rubber kit,its an excellant way to learn or a how to,the set of skirt pilers you get can also ,can later make silicone skirts easily,living rubber does not lend itself to realistic shad imitations,yet works well when they are hitting solid colors or mixtures therof.

[Rebbasser]

To me it really depends on the color of the skirt I want. For jigs I like silicone, but for some spinnerbait skirts I like living rubber-particularly when I want a blue/chartreuse/ and white skirt. Caught a LOT of fish using this color.