I took my kid up to mantua to do a little fishing wednesday. I rigged up a gamakatsu octopus hook with a slice of plastic on it and we caught hundreds of bluegills, one after another.
We just dropped the offerings over the side of the boat and let them sink as far as they could get until you had a gill on.
The trick was to keep the boat woving around. if you caught 20 gills in one spot, it kind of went dead. But as long as you kept moving around it was steady fishing.
Didnt even require any bait. Just a hook covered ina thin sliver of plastic.