If any one plug is essential to fishermen everywhere, the Rapala is it. Lauri Rapala made the first one in Finland back in 1936 using lightweight cork for a slim body. Aluminum foil on the sides added flash, and he melted some old photographic film to make a transparent, glossy coating. Those days of cork-bodied plugs are long gone, of course, thanks to modern plastics, but the idea of a light, buoyant, and thus highly active minnow-imitating lure lives on.