Dayton ... I found that a solid body plastic bait does seem to skip better/farther than a hollow body tube. So far, in my somewhat limited experience of dock shooting, I've found the Bass Assassin 1.5" Tiny Shad to be one of the better "skippers". I normally use a 1/16oz weedless jighead ... 6# hi-viz Vicious line ... and use my 6'6" ESP PowerLite rod (Very Fast Action tip) & Okuma Stratus STX20 reel.
These are not what I started my dock shooting with, which was a 5' UL rod/reel outfit & 4# test mono, but it is what I'm using nowadays. And I rarely, if ever, attempt to sidearm cast to shoot a dock, simply because I can (slingshot) "shoot" the jig farther and with more accuracy .... especially when the openings are narrow.
In those instances when the wind makes boat control a little dicey and the rear seat angler is kept "out of range" ... I tell the rear seat angler to stand in the floor of the boat & behind my seat to get his shot off. That does two things (in his favor) : he's lower to the water's surface, so his shot trajectory helps him skip the jig farther, and he has to bend over a lot less than when sitting in the raised platform seat of my boat. It also means that both lines are more parallel to each other, and there's a lot less chance of crossed lines.