I usually catfish, but my buddy wants me to take him crappie fishing this weekend. I don't have a trolling motor so I was planning on tying up to the LE bridge. Any suggestions on which columns are better than the others?

the ones near a creek channel

When fishing a new bridge I always get under the swallow nests.
things drop out of those and the fish know it.
This bridge has some nice brush under most of the columns.

I too have noticed they like to hang out near the swallow poop. I think the poop attracts baitfish.
Dont tie up to the piling right off. get you each an 8 foot pole, and tie on a triple threat. )3 different jigs tipped with either crappie nibbles or minnows spaced abt 10 inches to a foot apart.(heaviest jig on the bottom). ease up to the piling, starting in around 8 foot of water, drop to the bottom, wait a few sec, reel two cranks, wait a fdew secs, if no bite, move to the next set of pilings down that are deeper. you can make quick work of locating the fish this way. If your buddy can fish one side of the piling while you fish the other, its more effective. dont tie up to a piling unless you establish a pattern .. around 5 fish. stick and move, until you find them. If its morning time or cloudy and overcast they may be up shallow. just cover the whole water column before you move.

Fishin' nut,I use to fish it alot,before the work started,We always started on the third piling from the east side.It was always 23 feet deep and the fish were usually 13 feet down.Frrom that piling we would move west to each other piling fishing at the same depth. We wou do preety good. Now as i said with the work on the new bridge i haven't aclue. We used mostly minnows but we did use some jigs.Good luck

Thanks everyone (and to those who sent me PM's). Hopefully the weather will be nice on Sunday.

go slay em buddy!!!