Man I use to eat those smelt ....breaded and pan fried. My Mother in law fixed em. I thought they were pretty good for a change. I have fished a lot in the Mississippi,Ohio,and Tennessee river systems. And I'm telling you sometimes they would just key in on a specific bait and you had to figure it out. I have seen them get picky. We used mooneyes,herring,gizzard,and threadfin shad. We always tried to catch fresh bait...but when bait gettin was good we always took some home and froze it. We would bring it along and if we had trouble gettin bait we would use the frozen...never let it thaw out completely...always kept it on ice. Use to be a lot of guys would fish around each other...you would be sittin' there and not catching anything and a guy anchored 20 yards away pulling in em left and right...You'd holler what you using ? And he might say "Mooneye chunked" and you'd be using Gizzard shad and hardly a bite...next week different story different bait.Generally speaking local bait is usually best..but hey sometimes other stuff works too. Caught em on everything from salami,to hot dogs and shrimp,livers,corn,worms,mussels,grasshoppers,craw dads,cut bait of all kinds of fish...asian carp work.