Canal Rat,
I'm not a canal expert by any means but if you're fishing the canal you have a good shot at nailing some good fish. You probably just need to change tactics.
My first year fishing down there was two falls ago, I took my normal surf gear, threw some 5" storms, some castmasters, some small jigs and like you I hit twinkville pretty hard. I bet if I caught 200 fish, maybe 4 or 5 were keepers and those were only in the 28-32" range.
Unless your fishing slack or are into the bike patrol chasing the breaking fish, put the plugs away. You gotta get deep, eels, chunks, big jigs (3+ oz) of all kinds. get it down and keep it down
