As I have stated many times, I cut my teeth crappie fishing jigging structure while vertically presenting the bait with a long pole. As has been posted on this thread by Southern Young Gun, most tournaments are won trolling. Slow trolling, or spider rigging is by far the choice of most veteran tournament anglers day in and day out. The reason being, is precise depth control, precise boat control, and the ability to stay right over tightly grouped or slow to bite fish. Long line trolling can be and is an excellent technique to add to ones arsenal. You fish a lake (Greenwood) where long line trolling is king most of the time. After seeing it done a number of times in Georgia's lake Sinclair and Oconee in the early 90's I decided it was something I wanted to learn how to do. I had no one to give me information so I had to learn it on my own. I fabricated some rod holders using training wheel brackets off a bicycle and a piece of conduit. They looked odd, but were effective. I only trolled 6 rods. It took much practice, and much time on the water as good graphs and fish finders were very expensive and out of my price range. After honing my few skills, I fished a Crappie USA tournament on Murray. As luck would have it, I found the mother load of fish in the Hollow Creek area near Walters Rawls cabin. Using my little 14 jon boat, a foot operated trolling motor, and 5 rods, due to breaking one. We boated over 100 crappie that day and finished in 9th place out of over 100 boats entered. Long lining can be very fun and exciting, you do cover lots of water and can catch lots of a large variety of fish. If I was to give advice on how to start, it would be this; (1) Get a Minn Kota power drive trolling motor and a wireless remote for it. (2) Purchase two rod racks that are capable of holding 4 rods on each rack, and mount them in the back of the boat. (3) Purchase a good quality depth finder (4) Get two 14 foot rods, two 12 foot rods, two 10 foot rods, and two 8 foot rods, so the spread will be staggered and lines not to close together. (5) Start with an 8 rod spread fishing all rods out of the back of the boat. (6) Learn the technique while fishing alone, problems are going to be encountered, and are better figured out by ones self. (7) Follow the instructions that were offered by Gabowman earlier in this thread. Good luck!