Closer to Walker than Brainerd, but went up with a group of guys over the weekend for some panfish.
Any little finger of the basin that reached up into a smaller bay, or even between shoreline and off shore structure held schools of crappies and sunnies. Our max depth in the main lake we fished was about 22-25′, with our fish being found in 22′. The bigger the finger, the more scattered they were, the smaller, the more concentrated. For good size, find those fingers on virgin ice and you’ll be better off.
Bigger sunnies were relating more to the rock piles. Ours topped off at 8′, quickly dropping into 15′. They were holding on the very bottom of these where it transitions to sand on your sonar. Smaller tungsten with 3-4 spikes just bobbled ever so slightly. Grab your spring bobber rods!
Timing was pretty key, couple hour window in the morning and at night was where most the action was. Morning being better from about 615-830ish. I drilled holes everywhere after the hot bites to follow them but could never find where they went. Except for really shallow, if I were a betting man there was some good weed beds adjacent to the areas we were catching them they’d move to, which there are in the summer, hindsight is always 20/20 right?
Glow jigs seemed to work really well for crappies, 1/32 with a lil rubber body on it, no hair or arms, just the body with a crappie minnow or fathead. I caught several on a small tungsten with spikes, but they really preferred the meat.
Side note this is the 2nd weekend my new Jiffy wouldn’t work for me the 2nd day. Had it fixed after it crapped on Leech , worked fine several times since then on just single outings, but once it sits outside for a night its toast. Very frustrating.