Wanting to put out my first few brush piles. Any advice on types of locations to place them or what to look for?

Breaks. Creek channel edges or sharp bends. I put 90% of mine on breaks or even in the middle of the channel. Depth has to be correct. Use real bushy trees. Lots of people use cedar and it is good but I use mainly hardwoods, they don't tend to hang up your jigs as much. You want trees that have at least enough bigger limbs on it to hold the bulk of the pile up. If you use something with little flexible limbs, the pile will eventually flatten out and lay on the bottom flat. You want the piles to look like a big ball. You want the crappie to be able to move to deeper water or shallower, while staying on your pile (vertically in the water colum). Not have to leave the pile to find deeper cover, if that makes sense.

It helps if the spot already holds a few crappie too.

Yep. Most of my best places are made where I caught them before on bass lures in the spring or fall.

OK. This is probably a dumb question...BUT what are you calling a "break".

A sharper drop in the depth of the water, compared to the surrounding water.

Sharp drop offs. For instance, a bank slowly slopes out to 15 foot deep and then "breaks" or drops quickly to 20 foot or deeper. A lot of times I have a pile that the front of the boat maybe sitting in 20 foot and the back is 30 or more.

My piles are large. I drop a pile in 30FOW it will top out 10-15 foot. Even in the heat of summer, first thing in the mornings, the crappie will be right on top of the piles. As the sun gets high, they will just move deeper or down in the brush. That is why I try to use hardwood instead of cedar, there are enough gaps in the limbs of a hardwood for the crappie to get down in. A thick cedar they can't, they just have to get around it. I do use some cedar if it is available some. I use Cyprus a lot and lots of poodle topped persimmon and elm. Sycamore and sweet gum is good too if you can get some good round bushy ones.

How do you weight them down? Just tie some type of scrap metal to the base of them?

Yes. Cinder blocks, rocks etc.

Give me the GPS coordinates and I'll let you know if you did it right.

Anybody ever use Mesquite? It looks like it would be good to me.

Points always produce for me as well as breaks. Depth depends on time of year and lake. Some lakes 10' is perfect for summer and another lake it may be 20'.