A black bead head nymph with some smelly jelly on it bellow a bobber.

Blue Fox big crappie jig is my sunfish getter of choice if I need something like that. Not sure if you can still find any of them though. 

I'll be 67 in a few weeks and your OP reminded me of what was a popular "bait" when I was a kid with a cane pole or a Zebco reel fishing for bluegills in Texas stock tanks: a sliver of pork rind. 

 

You can buy a little piece from a butcher, people use it to flavor soups and stews. You won't need much and it can be frozen between fishing days.

 

Thawed out, use a razor blade to slice off the appropriate size for your hook. You may need a tiny needle to make a pilot hole in the rind then run your hook through it. It can be tough to get the hook through it, like pushing through leather. 

 

Some rind, some fat is best.

 

Forget about EVER getting your hook back out. You won't be able to and neither will a fish. You'll have to cut the hook off at the end of the day. Ha!

 

Brad

 

 

Trout Magnet in green/black with the included 1/64 oz jig heads, ultralight rod. Might help casting to add a small split shot a foot up from the lure.

The few times that I've seriously went bluegill/assorted sunfish fishing, I bought a bunch of crickets.   I used a small long shank sproat style hook, the pre-rigged ones you find in Walmart.   I put a small drop of super glue on the shank of the hook and just stuck the live cricket on the hook.  After 6 or 10 crickets the hook shank would get kind of gummed up and just tie on a new hook.

 

The rest of the presentation consisted of a 6'6" ML spinning rod with 6 lb test, a foam weighted bobber and a 1/16 egg sinker on the line.  (The loop on the pre-rigged hook kept it from sliding down too far). I could have used a split shot, but the egg sinker was what I had.   

 

You had to experiment with leader length from the bobber.   6' was about the maximum you could throw, I had my best luck (using the bobber) at 2 1/2 to 3 feet.   Once you had the school stirred up you didn't need the bobber, just throw in the direction of the school and something would hit it on the drop.   Me and a few buddies, fishing in a strip pit with limited bank access, caught several hundred fish.  

 

Anyway, no reason why you couldn't adapt that system to fish with kids.  You do it, my tolerance for fishing with kids is VERY limited, I've learned my lesson and I just don't do it anymore.

Trout Magnets work great for panfish, never had much luck with them for trout though lol.

Small 1/64 jig with a small twister tail.  Put a bobber about a foot above.  Just have them cast it out and reel it back slowly to the boat.

Power shot rig using the smallest dropshot hook you can find, and a 1/16-1/8 oz weight hanging below. A small piece of nightcrawler as bait should catch several perch no problem. The reason you lose nightcrawlers is from hooksets. With setup you reel in and lift, and most of the time get the worm back. This is my go-to perch rig around pond edges and creeks, and it is deadly effective with a tiny dock demon pole where I can fling the line out underhanded. Don't need anything else but that.

I've used Gulp 1" minnows in the past with good results. The ones I bought this year are so soft and mushy they will fall apart putting them on the hook. Appears to be a different formula or possibly a very old batch.