Fishmaster, I haven`t used crawfish for bait in years and usually caught my own when I did. The invasive species thing I think with your ban? Rusty Crawfish being sold? I had some real good days using crawfish for smallies on Lake Erie years ago, also had days when you couldn`t keep the sheephead away from them, an expensive bait to buy to feed Sheephead.
My biggest Sheephead came on a crawfish, pushing 20 pounds, smallies being a smaller fish don`t stand much chance against that kind of competition for food. I have also used Golden Shiners and suckers for smallies, suckers seem to attract more interest from Walleye on Lake Erie, the Golden Shiners can go either way. Last 20 years or so mostly lures, good bait stores are hard to find, and I didn`t have time to chase bait.
We get the Lake Erie shoreline bait stores with small minnows for panfish(eg. perch), inland lakes bait stores sell golden shiners for bass, some cross over in early spring. Now that the bass season is closed on Erie (a good thing) I don`t fish there early in the year. Rather see them spawn in peace, lol don`t fish much now anyway.