fishing the canal with bait

[CANAL RAT]

i fish bait on the beaches mostly clams,sea worms,pogy and mackeral and only plug the canal so i need to be schooled on baitfishing the canal,so i used a drift rig with a 2oz egg sinker and i could not keep the mackeral on the hook and i could not keep the weeds off of it, what range of sinker weights should i use?,is there any particular type of bait that works in the canal best? and what pieces of the baitfish the stay on the hook best?. funny thing is when i swiched over to jigging a 2oz hopkins i caught fish!!!