I am really new to longlining (pulling jigs) but I'll tell you a few things that have helped me. I only started this spring and have fished that way maybe 20 times. First I had some really good people allow me to fish with them while longlining. Slabprowler, CrappieFlopper, and Bob who is CF's neighbor. All of them do things a little differently, but I settled on rigging the boat the way Slabprowlers was set up when I fished with him at the Bama spring camp. Driver fishes one side of the boat and passenger fishes the other side. I fish 4 poles out of the right side off the front deck and 4 off the left side of the back. Doesn't matter which way you rig that, that's just how I did it. I fish 16, 12, 10 and 8 foot rods. The only reason I do that is because I bought 2, 8 footers before instead of 2, 14's. I first tried 2, 12's and 2, 10's because that's what I had and for me, that doesn't work. I varied the height off the water of the same length poles but I still wound up in a mess.
I lucked into figuring this one out. I had 3 different colored lines on spinning reels when I started. All are some fashion of Hi-Vis. I need to respool a few of those and I'm going to stay with different colored lines. That helps me know which reel to roll up when I get tangled. That's a small thing, but I like it.
I am going to experiment more with different weights of jigheads. I've been using mostly 2- 32's of a 32 and 16 and letting out more, or less line to vary the depth but that it very hit and miss for me, mostly miss, when trying to fish deeper than 10 feet or so.
One tip that a guide told us at the spring Bama camp was to put a crappie nibble on each jig. I have decided that really does help. It's aggravating to do, every time, but I have seen twice in the past month where we went from not catching, to catching just by putting the nibbles on. First time I thought it was a fluke but it happened again this past week, so now I'm a believer in that.
My 16' poles are Jenko SpiderTrolls and I really like them. I have some cheaper Limit and Cypress Creek rods and I prefer the Cypress Creeks from Jenko. They have more backbone lower on the blank. The Limits work fine though. Just a personal preference.
I have not pulled minnows, nor do I plan to start unless I get really desperate. LOL
At any rate, maybe more of the more experienced guys will chime in.
