“The secret,” he says, “is to have at least 40 good piles to hit in a day, because you’ll get only 5 or so fish off each one in October or November. The crappies are constantly moving and almost pelagic, but they do seem to stop on well-placed brushpiles for a while. So I don’t fish each pile for long. Five to ten minutes and I move on.”

When shad counts are low because of a poor hatch in spring, Kehde’s crappies switch to insect forage and tend to stay on brushpiles longer. “Brushpiles provide a terrific source of aquatic insects, but crappies go right to the center of the piles. You have to pitch jigs and finesse your way through the brush or get right on top and vertically fish down through the branches and sticks. I use 8-pound test, usually a 1/16-ounce or sometimes a 1/32-ounce jig tied with marabou or chenille or tipped with a plastic body. Nobody ever tips with bait here, except the Kentucky spider-rig fishermen. They do quite well when crappies are in open water, but not so well in brushpiles.”

Kehde’s first choice most days is a Bailey’s Magnet, a solid tube. “It’s a tough piece of plastic,” he says. “It doesn’t tear up in the brush. Another great bait is the Bait Rigs Grub Master in a tube, a grub, or one of the new micro spider grubs in the Grub Master kit. It has a slow, horizontal drop, great for crappies hanging high in the brush, when we pitch and swim jigs through the tops of the piles. But we mostly work jigs vertically, in fall. The only way to penetrate the brush is vertically. When crappies hold in the interior or around the base of the piles, we want to be directly above them, finessing light marabou or chenille jigs.”