Take a look at the okuma 8'6" medium action "great lakes trolling rods". All my live bait trolling rigs are 7'6" med lt ugly stik striper rods. My livebait bottom rigs are 7 ft med lt ugly stik striper rods. But ive been using the okuma great lakes 8'6" trolling rods for some time now to try amd get the down lines spread out and away from the boat to keep fish from getting tangled in them once the fish is close to the boat. Last year i wanted to try the slide divers on some deep fish i saw on the graph so i re-rigged the okumas with the slide divers and we caught 6 fish in 30 minutes and only had one trip w/o a hook up and lost one fish at the net. I will say this though, with the 8'6" rods you will need a sturdy extendable handle landing net as you have to be able to reach out a little farther than with conventio al length rods. I also had to play with the drag a little as the hit and trip on the slide diver is a little different than the downrigger, it seems like the time from hit to full load is almost instantaneous with the diver