“With tubes, squid, and other light plastics, the standard setback is about 20 to 26 inches. But standards are meant to be played with. No matter what kind of lure or bait you run behind an attractor, setback ultimately has to do with how they’re striking. When they get hooked on the head or back, the leader is too short. When they strike and miss a lot, the leader is too long.”

Speed-Sensitive Program

Dodgers are heavier, being made of steel or brass. The typical action is side-to-side with an occasional roll. Flashers, on the other hand, can be broken down into three categories, including spinners and rotators. Flashers are made of plastic and the action is inherently different. “The back of a flasher spins on its axis and creates a larger circle than the front,” Dawidiuk explains. “The flasher kicks itself out of this rotation from time to time, and that’s the key to its effectiveness. It’s a built-in triggering mechanism. It took me a while to learn to run flashers over dodgers. This is a speed-sensitive program. Dodgers and flashers do not operate within the same speed range. The effective range of flashers begins 1/4 to 1/2 mile per hour beyond the effective range of dodgers. If you go 1/4 mile per hour faster or slower than the optimum range for dodgers, you don’t get bit.”

Dawidiuk starts trolling dodgers at 2.2 to 2.5 mph and flashers at 2.8 to 3.2 mph. “You really have to run flashers and dodgers side by side next to the boat and watch,” he says. “That’s how I came up with 1/4 to 1/2 mile faster speeds for flashers.

“And I still prefer wire line as my speed indicator,” he says. “The tip action of a rod rigged with wire line is a better indicator than GPS—not that you shouldn’t pay attention to speed-over-ground or speed indicators on the sonar unit. But those can be rendered inaccurate because of underwater currents. Wire has no stretch, and a dodger running correctly makes that rod tip thump constantly. A flasher has a much more subtle thump. GPS can lie to you, but the rod tip on a wire rod can’t. Pay attention to it, know what the rod tip is doing at all times, and you begin to piece together an effective program.”

Many new styles of flashers exist. “The hookup is off-center on these new flashers,” Dawidiuk points out. “Some have adjustable fins [Legendary Products, Church Tackle] for creating different actions. In theory, you can call them rotators because the hook-up point is midline on the flasher. Flashers that hook up off-center, we call swimmers [Hootchie Mama, Fish Catchers, Dream Weaver Spin Doctor] because they have a corkscrew swimming action. So you have traditional flashers [Luhr Jensen Coyote, Hot Spot, Pro-Troll, Little Shooter], swimmers [off-center hook-up], and hybrids with adjustable fins.