The simplest way to get exact distances is to mark your line with indelable felt pen. For instance my garage is 50 ft from the street so I measure it out and mark it. I have a marker on the boat to refresh the marks and if we lose a bit of line we pull over and match the lengths and it's pretty easy to remove the old marks. It makes it real easy and FAST to get the plugs out. I hate rowing my ass off to stay in a spot so one guy is slowly counting pulls.

As far as the length being the same I think it's real important. That one bit of fine tuning made a lot of difference. I mark my lines in ten foot intervals starting at 50 ft as when I'm plugging there should be no belly in your line. slow water i bring it in a little, faster water you can let it out. Remember that the closer to the boat the plug is the deeper it will dive and the farther away the shallower it will be.

I was told by the guy that taught me to plug that the reason the plugs need to be the same lenght is so the fish don't have an escape route. His theory was that the fish in a slot is being pushed back intil it's out of their comfort zone they will strike or completly roll out of the hole.

Any way thats my 2 cents. Good luck E-mail me if you like.

Ron Bob