it would be difficult to guess what the difference might have been between what i was doing and what you were doing. it might have been something subtle , or it could have been in fact the alewives that made the difference, ive seen it over and over in the past, but its hard to say. i would like to point out i consider 2 stripes in 3 hours to be VERY slow, almost painfully slow, if it wouldnt have been for the smallies i would have probably went home. and the difference could have been the stripes just happened to find me out of blind luck.

p.s. for some stupid, unknown reason i threw the net 3 times this morning and caught 1 alewive....yep same light i catch about 3 million alewives a year under...so no bait = no trip this morning. ive noticed over the years storms and lightning can really affect the bait and you have to work and change things up to get enough to fish.

on the subject of alewives you mentioned they die pretty easily on the hook and in "the bucket". if alewives are dying on the hook and its not late summer hot water, you are pretty much stressing them to the point they cant take the trauma of being on a hook. ive said it before and i will say it again, keeping alewives alive and keeping alewives LIVELY are two different things. i have top of the line bait tanks that i use and have formulated the amount of salt, foam off , ammonia neutralizer etc for different water temps through out the year. i am able to very closely monitor and maintain the optimum water temp to hold the maximum of o2 per cf of water.
duayne has spent years perfecting his own homemade tank that does all of the things i mentioned above. they might be homemade but i prefer to call them custom-pro grade.
so it might be a lot to expect trying to keep an alewive LIVELY and healthy in anything less than the optimum environment.
when someone asks me if using alewives really makes that much of a difference my automatic reply is this...."there is a reason why every proffessional guide on the lake uses alewives every day....because they have to catch fish every day".

on any given day one boat fishing with shiners might catch more fish than every other boat, but for the next 99 days i can almost guarantee it wont happen again.
like longdrive said, if you saw steak sandwich and "steak-like" sandwich which one would you order.

i hope this helps some. i dont care to answer questions or help any way i can, dont care a bit.
but you can learn more watching a guide do it in person than i can tell you in writing, its money well spent. if you need names of some fine guides and fine people to boot pm me and i will steer you in the right direction.