Dodgers and pop gear work great in CO lakes for salmon (kokes), trout, lakers (char). Run them on any of the following: straight mono, lead core, behind a dipsy diver, or off of a downrigger -- depending how deep you want to fish. I like to run (insert any inline lure here i.e. koke killers,needlefish, taz devils, etc,etc,etc) 3-4 feet behind the pop gear or dodger. The only down side to pop gear is that it takes a lot of the fight out of a small fish -- sometimes to the point of not being able to tell one is hooked. You can get dodgers that release when a fish stikes -- allowing you to play the fish without fighting the dodger.
Cow bells/Pop gear work well for Kokanee. A small spoon or wedding ring 18-30 inches behind the pop gear, tipped with a bit of corn or piece of crawler work well. Depth control is important, downriggers help if the fish are deeper than 30 feet.
Dodgers work at times for both salmon and lakers. A fly or bait 1.5 times the dodger length (longer for hard lures and spoons) behind the dodger, tipped with some scent.
Neither of these are my favorite. I like spoons, big thin spoons for lakers. Michigan stinger, northern, sutton, and others. Even Laker Takers are ok-kinda thick though. Smaller spoons like taz devils, needle fish, zray, are good for rainbow trout and kokanee. Minnow baits work too, and some people swear by big flat fish for lakers, I will test them again this year, side by side with a spoon.
I like spoons the best also, well,,,, sometimes! Flatfish are a good lure at Big Blue, but they are used by lots of people. Canadian Lake Trout love banana baits, but that's Canada where fish eat anything including small children and midgets. My 2 cents, spoons beat bananas in Colorado any day. Course, the biggest macks aren't caught trolling! Hmmm.
For Ultra-Light Dodgers and Flashers check out http://www.sepsprofishing.com/index.html
He is based out of Vacaville, CA. I've used this gear in CA and CO lakes trolling for trout and have caught my share of fish. It's nice because his gear is Ultra- Light so you can feel the fight! I've also seen Seps' gear at Wal-Mart and Kmart here in CO.
I bought a bunch of these last year and had good luck with them. I bought them at K-mart. Sportsman's Wh rehouse has some of this company's gear. They're called "slingblade dodgers". They're from the same guy who makes koke-a-nut.
The ones they have for $2.99 are triple teasers. And I think their dodgers. Bend on the front and back. I have some of the ones that LK has posted. Sometimes they even come with the koke-a-nut in the package.
Last year I bought 3 dodgers from walmart they are Luhr Jensen, they are about I want to say 5in long may be 1 3/4 to 2in wide and all chrome or nickle which ever. Then I got on ebay and looked at some pretty cool holographic stickers I ended up buying like 4 or 5 different patterns, thus customizing them to what I hope will turn out to be awesome. The problem was I have never used one or for that matter never even seen one till they were on clearence for $2.00 and I figured why not. Do to the great tips from people I sure am glade I said why not.
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