Schooling Bait fish

Last week my brother in law and I fished the Mississippi River Pool 18. We
caught a few decent fish in the limited time we had, but here's my question.
We found bait fish on all the major main river points and over much of the
shore lines. On the last point there were literally schools of bait fish for
about a fifty yard diameter. We could see larger fish feeding on them, but
couldn't get a bite no matter what we threw. I suppose the bigger fish were
just gorging themselves at that location and nothing would have been
successful, but I wondering what we could have done at other venues on the
river were there were also plenty of shad and we had a hard time getting a
bite. Any tips or suggestions appreciated as ususal. We smacked em again on
the Cal last Friday, but didn't see much baitfish activity at all.

Now I'm grounded with a broken down boat motor acccccck ! Thanks for any
help guys/gals

mike
--
God Bless America

Josh The Bad Bear