Pellet waggler, fished pellet waggler style might work.
Use one of your lighter rods if you have one, just keep catapulting (or throwing) a few pellets in to get the fish up in the water, fish your hook bait around 1 metre (3ft) deep to begin with and keep adjusting the depth (normally shallowing up) until you find them, 12mm pellets should keep the smaller fish out of the way.
It's a fun and very active way of fishing, and you can often see the activity of the fish coming up in the water, do not entertain the idea if wildlife is a problem since you will only train the wildlife to eat all of your bait.
Pellet wagglers are short stumpy things so you can fish really shallow. I prefer loaded ones so that the pellet c ocks the float. 6 and 8g cast really well, but if you're using a heavy rod, you might want a slightly heavier one - obviously depending on distance fished.