been a while since i fished for herring, but from memrory i used to find burley very helpful. once they were burleyed up they used to eat just about anything.  

i wuld usually burley up, and use and burley blob/float with a small long shank hook with prawn or squid or whitebait. o i would cats very small twistys. 

i also had good success with a samll set of gangs, and casting whole whitebait, and doing a slow retrieve for skippy/bream. 

 a packet of baitchaser rigs from BCF (dont buy the baitchaser rigs wwith the tiny little hooks) . Burley cage at bottom of rig, two baitchaser hooks above burley cage then swivel attached to main line. Make up pollard so its not to sloppy, throw a few handfulls out in front of you as far as you can. Fill burley cage with pollard, put prawn pieces on hooks throw out to where you threw the burley  and let it sink slowly. Once the burley ayttracts the herring, skippy you will often catch two at once  for tarwhine and whiting let it sink to the bottom but only on sandy bottom otherwise too may snags you lose too many rigs  cheers 

You can buy pre made floating rigs for herring at bcf for cheap. If you are unsure about rigs these work alright. Burley up and the fish will come to you. I have always had alot of luck using squid for bait. Try to keep you rigs close to the surface, anything on the bottom will attract unwanted fish. 

When fishing for hezzas the burly I used was pollard , scrap batter from the fish and chip shop and added a bit of flour to thicken it up. Simple rig. I used one of those burly cages with the white foam in it but cut about 1/2 _ 1/3 out to allow it to sink slowly. After the float I used about 1 mtr of light line down to a single hook but on the odd time I added an extra hook haf way along. Other times would be a float with about 1 to 1/12 mtrs of trace using a 5 cm length of lumo tube down over the hook. Slowly retrieve the lime as herring have soft mouths and can easily pullnthe hook