I was at the canal this morning watching a blitz occuring in the middle of the Canal.
The guys on shore couldn't cast to them. They should have been using a spud launcher to launch their bait/lures.
Spud launchers are also great for getting lazy sea gulls off their ass so they
can find you schools of fish.
Here are a couple of sites if you want to build one:
http://www.goldmann.com/potato/launcher.html
http://members.aol.com/Fordbrnco/spud.html