A lot of suggestions here are for boards that are to be ridden shorter than ones height.
Part of my reality check is to see if I’m off base when I think I need a bit more length.
I get most have a wide point forward and that helps elongate the feel, but one of the goals of this board is to catch and get in early to soft rolling take offs, where I feel like length is a huge benefit.
You said you didn't like the mid length so that's probably part of it. I am guessing I am not the only person responding with a quiver where the bottom end board is over 9'6" and the next board up is under 6 foot, and the only boards we have longer than height are for the exact opposite of soft rolling surf.
IMHO most people love their groveler in that surf, and even if the mid-length gets in earlier, paddling their groveler a little harder is less of a pain in the ass than duck diving a volumey midlength. I goofed off for an afternoon last week on a rental, an 8'2" mini-mal funboard type thing (disclaimer: I did not get within 80 yards of the main bowl). I could duck dive it but it was kind of a slow process to get it down and leveled off under the wave, and there was basically nothing that board did that my Bean Bag doesn't do 10x better.
Can you get more specific about why the mid-length didn't work for you? If you nixed mid-length and you're not into shorter than height, if you have a shaper who would listen to you and care about this vs just nodding and handing you some jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none funboard, they might concoct some sort of longfish or stretched, but not boaty-railed, egg or whatever and even if they don't solve this odd Rubik's cube first go around, after you give the board a go and say what tradeoffs you are willing to make the second custom should be a real hoot.