A lot of younger fishermen shy away from flasher units, but I still have a $200 Vexilar flasher unit in my boat and I use it all the time. It’s a throwback to the days when I used to ice-fish all winter. I could see a maggot wiggling on the end of the hook 50 feet deep.

When you’re in a boat, a flasher will tell you what you’re going over instantaneously, even when you’re up and running. I can scout a lot faster, and when I see something that looks interesting, I might slow down and use one of the newer units to give it a closer look and store it. I also use the GPS to get me back to spots, but I don’t depend on it to help me find small pieces of cover or structure changes where bass hang out. I like to triangulate small spots if I can by lining up three different features on the bank such as a tree, the corner of a boat dock, a water tower or whatever. Sometimes the old-fashioned ways of doing things work just as well today as they ever did.

— Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes pro Dave Lefebre of Union City, Pa.