never seen so many fishing the bridges. are they catching bass on them?....all were big bass boats.

More than likely they were crappie fishing but you can catch bass and cat's around the pilings also.
The bridge pilings attract small fish which intern attract larger fish. It also provides shade. It's kinda like you or me sitting under the old oak tree

Hey Hawg,
Camped out on Buggs (Rudds Campground) this weekend and fished the bridge pilings on Rudds and Butchers. Did good in numbers, but not many big ones. The water was moving out when I fished the pilings. Only caught fish on the shallow ends. I was wondering the same thing myself, lots of bass fishermen around the bridges fishing deep. I am new to Buggs and not used to fishing deep. Sunday I decided to fish deeper and got on better fish. Most were in 10-25 feet of water. Hope this helps.
Good luck.

I saw a tourney fisherman fish a bridge piling in 20' of water when he arrived from the start - 6 am. I passed by at noon and he was still fishing in the exact same spot.

How exactly do you fish a piling in 20' of water for bass? I think he was vertically presenting a jig. Is this a bottom bouncing thing, or at any/all depths along the piling? Never really spent a lot of time doing this.

i fish the pilins a lot for crappie, with 4lb test an a 3/32 oz homemade bucktail jig. have caught LMB swimmin the jig past the pilins at various depths. caught 15 -18 lb limits while crappie fishin many times. they suspend at whatever depth the bait is...thats why they are there, to eat. hope this helps!

A couple weeks ago there were thousands of big shad around those pilings, spawning or eating I don't know but you couldn't hardly retrieve a spinnerbait for the shad running into it. Caught some good fish with a heavy spinnerbait letting it get deep and be bumpin the pilling on the way back. Caught small fish there yetsrday and saw right many small ones caught but nothing to write home about. Looked like tiny shad had moved up to replace the big ones which should be great for crappie. Bout got a rod yanked out of my hand on a large swimbait but didn't hook up. Caught a few small fish on main lake points yaesterday but the big ones eluded me all day. Saw a 3-4 pounder run a bluegill up close to the bank and the bass slide up the bank out of the water, flip flopped a few times and back into the water he went, first time I have ever seen that in all my years of fishing. Found several large schools of shad/fish around the mouth of grassy all suspended 12-15 ft in 25-30 ft of water. One grabbed my simbait on the way down then another whacked it on the way in but did not get a hook in either. Did a little modifying on the hook on that bait and can't wait to get back down to try it again.
Ray M