How to keep sunnies from messing up my spinner rig

Going to use a spinner rig for walleye, last time I used one small sunfish kept stealing my leech-anyone have a plastic they could reccomend? This time of year if you fish by weeds sunnies are going to mess with your stuff-I get that, just looking for something that would work that would be a bit more durable-Thought about using a bass plastic called a TRD, stuff is tough but also very bouyant so that could mess things up.
Thanks

Uncle Josh pork baits work well…fished them side by side w live bait and caught roughly the same…i got sick of going thru 4 boxes of crawlers in a couple hours bc of dink perch…they are a pain to get off tho

Thanks, I will look for those-I’m gonna bring crawlers and leeches, I really see their place under a bobber or on a jig, but trolling 1.1 mph just wonder if they are worth the hassle-other ideas?

It will be tough finding the Uncle Josh baits. They quit making them in 2015.

I bought some Gulp Alive crawlers first this reason, but haven’t used them, prefer jigging raps on weedlines

All I use is plastics and we have a ton of smaller perch just nipping at it. Usually with the gulp leeches you can catch the bigger perch while the smaller ones just nip it enough to cause a few issues but at least don’t take it.

Increase your speed until they leave you alone. We were on a spinner rig bite yesterday that ended up over 2.0 before those little things went away.

Great tips- Dave, are rigs still effective at 2mph? Do you shorten the leader or add more weight at 2mph?
Thanks

Just add weight or let them run farther behind the boat.

Speed up is the answer. The gills that smack a spinner running over 1.5 mph are usually keeper sized at least.

I’ve been on a no live bait thing this year. Gulp leeches lately and gulp minnows a couple weeks ago. Maybe I’m doing something wrong but I would kill for some real leeches.