Polarized sunglasses do work. They don't let you see the bottom of the water, they reduce the glare coming off the water from the sun, which does allow you to see deeper. I can see the bottom of the river most of the time when wearing polarized sunglasses and trout fishing.
When I used to fish I just used worms on a hook. I live sorta in the country so I just go in the woods and dig a few minutes. I did also used canned corn, corn kernels seem to get sunfish if you like them.
I was thinking about it the other day, you're not supposed to put lead in your mouth and we used to always bite our lead sinkers closed on our fishing lines as kids. We liked the taste of those sinkers!