I prefer longlining from the front of the boat. Gives me better depth control of the boat especially with the depth finder right in front of me. Trick is to get your rods out in front of you too so you can easily watch depth finder and your rods. I finally found the sweet spot on mounting my two Spyderlok rod holders up front. I can spider rig 8 rods with them or when I want to longline I just easily rotate the top of the rod holders to the side and the rods are still out in front of me for longlining. I use a 14' and 10' Southern crappie rods on each side. The longer rod lengths gets more bites being away from the boat and also helps a lot when making turns. Took me a while to get the right combination but this works very well for me. I caught 17 catfish (yes, counted them) two weeks ago longlining this way on crappie curly jigs. Had the front and rear livewells on my new Ranger RT188C full of fish for the first time. Was hoping for crappie but the cats were all around the balls of baitfish. Trolled at .08mph and used a 1/8 oz jig to get it down where the fish were. It was loads of fun and some hard work. Smallest channel cat was about 2lbs and largest was over 10lbs and I was by myself. Lots of fun but also lots of fish cleaning.