I've recently found that if you're bait fishing in water no deeper than 12 metres (about 40 feet), using a jigging lure with the bait can be more productive than a sinker/hook setup. The weight of your lure and the speed that it sinks down in the water will decide how much deeper you can fish.
Due to the fact that you don't have the weight of a sinker to disguise a nibble, I found the extra sensitivity of the setup let me pull in a blue cod that kept getting away when I was using a hook and sinker.