My wife bought me a 12 foot crappie Whuppin stick for Valentines day (I got her a new spinning combo).  I looked up a technique called "Doodlesocking", basically poking around in the brush for crappies.  I have a lot of slop that has fairly deep water under it (5-7 feet).  I think this will work for all pan fish.  The lakes I fish have musky and pike, which I think keep the bass and pan fish in the weeds.

Any suggestions/experience in this?

I've heard about it for crappie. but never tried it. It sounds like it'd work for just about anything. If ya try it let me know how it goes!

I've never heard it called "doodlesocking" before. I always just called it jigging. My father-in-law is a big advocate of this way of fishing for crappie. He has a old paint roller extenstion, the type that can telescope way out and on the end he has an old roller attached that just has the metal hook looking part. The springy thing that would hold the roll on has been removed.

We find thick patches of weeds or hydrilla and use the roller setup to pull open a hole. This works pretty well too. What ever you decide to use you need to make sure that it is pretty sturdy because sometimes those hydrilla patches can be mighty tough to make a hole in.

I just use a brem buster type fiberglass cane pole with a little lead head jig with a rubber skirt that's been tipped with a minnow. Then get to jigging! I have noticed that we seem to catch catfish like this on a regualr basis too.

Last time we went out we ended up comming back with crappie, catfish, warmouth & brem all pulled from thick hydrilla patches.

Good luck and i hope this helps.