With live bait you don’t want your downrigger too close to your live bait. The bait or fish you hook can swim into the downrigger and then tangle it up. In some cases it can mean your line goes into your prop. It’s usually 50-100 feet of line out and then attach downrigger even without live bait though. It’s just the normal practice. You don’t want your downrigger too close to a hooked fish… also also. Usually you want your trolling line that far back because of the boat kind of scaring fish away so 50-100 feet back or less or more sometimes depending on the species is when they will return to where the line/boat is/was
