Artyom - the pier

so, we got together again at the same place at the same time.. the wind was blowing from the east.. got there around 8:30 pm.. started setting up the gear, fished with bread and shrimp.. the fishermen on the pier were the same ones as a week ago. they say the wind today isn't right, but last time, when we were there, they supposedly caught 98 kutum. the number is, to put it mildly, scary.. but, considering there were about 7-8 guys, and each was fishing with around 10 rods, it may well be true, especially since the bite there is freaking awesome.. then again, though.. the kutum are mostly under a kilo.. there were very few big ones.. one of the fishermen told us that somewhere in the middle of the night, closer to morning even, something took his bait. he pulled and pulled, couldn't land it. the thing got away, all that was left was a bent hook!!
anyway, enough about last time.. having set up the rods, we decided to cast bread.. and after about a minute it started jerking like crazy.. pulled out an 800-gram kutum, even though they're supposed to bite at night, and that was confirmed, since there were no more bites until it got dark.. over the night we cuaght 15 kutum.. not one was over 800g! one was only 200 grams. where are the decent specimens? didn't come across a single one all night, only as we were leaving did we see one of the fishermen catch a roughly 1.200-1.500 one. maybe I should switch to fishing with a lot of rods too? especially since this pier is exactly the place for that kind of fishing, because almost anywhere else lots of spinning rods would just get in the way.
and yeah, of course there are a lot of snags.. no.. an insane amount!
can anyone recommend a good bite alarm? I spot the bite just by watching the rod tips.. I didn't really like the bells.. cause they don't always signal.. and sometimes they rattle for reasons that have nothing to do with fish.. is it worth trying those spring bite indicators everyone loves?
and yeah, the pics came out awful, because we left the proper camera at the dacha and shot on a phone.. without even a flash.. then again we never caught a decent kutum, so there's not much to photograph anyway)))