Your right, you've got to get noticed. Fishing the middle of the school is tough.
Try throwing a representitive sized/colored streamer on a sink tip line ( or with split shot) into teh school and let it sink below the croud. It will look like a stunded fish drifting down and may often draw strikes from lazy fish under the school. Another tactic is to throw a similar sized streamer in an attractor color to the edge/outside of the school. FWIW, I don't have experience fishing to shading bass in FW but have been saved by these tactics when fishing in big bait schools in the Salt. I'll bet they work.
hth