frozen sunfish for bait, am I wasting my time? Just in case I can't find much live bait.

Yes, dead bait is no bueno.. Keep them alive if you can. Striper and hybrids love them.

thanks

Do you think live sunfish are in the same zip code as shad with regards to bait? I are way easier to keep alive.

Perch are good as a alternative to live shad. I�ve had days I could watch striper on my sonar streaking up to my perch baits only to turn back down and refuse to eat them. Drop a smaller threadfin or similar size gizzards and they tear them up. Most days perch for bait is like most of us eating plain yogurt. It�s good for us and is edible but not preferred over other tastier meals. Some days perch have produced more and better fish than shad though. Maybe I need 3 tanks on my boat. 1 for perch 1 for gizzards and 1 for threadfin and I�m good to go except I won�t have room for anyone else on the boat.
Dead perch usually won�t attract fish unless it�s cut bait.

Live perch is usually pretty good bait, although as noted above, some days the fish prefer shad. Perch has the advantage of being easier to keep alive than shad. I've only used fresh cut perch for catfish, so couldn't give an opinion on their effectiveness for striped fish. Fresh cut shad can also work very well - have had plenty of days where I easily caught lots of hybrids/stripers on half a gizzard shad on a circle hook.

But the key on both is FRESH - caught that day, and kept on ice after they died, not floating in the livewell. Frozen bait is better than no bait, but it's not likely to be very productive.

So, maybe if I really think I need to or want to use "perch" I'll catch the night before and keep them off the dock in a fish basket or in the live well. Shouldn't be a problem with boat charger plugged in at the dock and running the live well.

shad will always out fish sunfish but I have caught stripers on live sunfish. I have never tried dead. Some people cut the dorsal fins. Now largemouths are another story altogether. If I catch a bluegill or sunfish while crappie fishing under the bridges on Lake Fork I will throw it one of my live bait rigs. Livewell pump does not draw many amps. I use to run mine on auto mode all the time while camping on Texoma. If you have coons and you hang a fish basket hanging off the dock over night you will just be feeding them.