For crappies it's darned hard to beat this bait and color combo. Here in SE Minnesota this bait in this color reigns supreme and its proven itself in Wisconsin, Iowa, North and South Dakotas too.
Next in line color-wise would be Junebug with the chartreuse tail [also in the picture]. After that is a glitter mix in clear plastic I call my bluegill blend, equal parts of copper, blue, purple and green .015 glitter, again with the chartreuse tail. To round out my favorites is a clear plastic with a micro string glitter called Party Crasher teamed up with the chartreuse tail.
The purple shown has zero colorant. Its clear plastic with a load of purple .08 glitter, like a tablespoon full in 6 ounces of plastic. The bluegill blend and the party crasher are super heavy on glitter too. The heavy glitter load makes a super tough plastic without giving up much of the normal plastic's action.
For crappie baits I'd suggest the chartreuse and purple colorants. And before I jumped out and bought the X2 colors, I'd spend the money on the Essential series colorants..... strong but smaller bottles. You can stretch your budget doing this.... maybe get a couple more colors. The Essential junebug is a very strong color that takes only about two or three drops in four ounces of plastic and will take you a long ways. The Essential Chartreuse is a very strong color that will go a long way too.
My advise is to work your way thru the Essential colors and as you gain confidence in your making and coloring the plastics you can slowly build into the X2 colors which are super strong. Chartreuse, purple, black, maybe watermelon to get started.
If I were to start out with this hobby and wanting to target crappies and knowing what I do now, I'd get the 1.5" Thump-It and the 2.25" Small Fry [shown] molds. Both are superb crappie baits and both molds are super friendly to inject.
