On DL a few years back, the bigger eyes were in the cattails in 2 ft of water. I took a wide body swim bait and cut a slice in the top of it. Pushed a long shank double hook through a piece of those long thin yellow ice fishing bobbers. I put that bobber piece at the curve of the hook and shoved the shank part through the nose of the swim bait. Pinned the thing in there with a toothpick. It floated real straight and looked appealing enough to me. Trouble was to get the line to settle to the water in the cattails so the bait would stay in the water. I had to kind of bullet cast it through the cattails to get it to work. It could take a few gator bites before I would need to make another bait. Had a blast catching eyes on essentially topwater baits. Might be a solution to a 10 dollar bait.