The first smoke is SO exciting!
Congrats!
Here's a couple of quick suggestions for the bird. I see you're brining - great! Another thing I do that really adds flavor and stabilizes the cooking process is to fill the cavity with "mirepoix." Pigsmoke, on this forum, turned me onto that. It's just equal parts chopped onion, carrots and celery, and a couple of lemon slices. Discard it after cooking; it's just for flavoring.
Only use about 2 oz of wood for a chicken. That should be about 2 2 1/2" of hickory dowel. I like to split mine lengthwise, and lay them in flat-side down. They smoke better, in my opinion.
As for temp, I use 250 for chicken. I find it's slow enough to cook thoroughly, and still leave a good dark skin.
As for the water pan: I always use a water pan to help stabilize the smoker temp swings, but it will add little to a chicken. Since it has a skin on it, the meat won't absorb much of the moisture it produces.
Here's a brined chicken I did recently:
http://smokinitforums.com/index.php?topic=1054.0Good luck! Let us know if you have any more questions!
