CRAPPIE CHEAT CODE – THE ORIGINAL

When it comes to crappie fishing, there’s one bait that rises above the rest – The Original Baby Shad. It is the top selling crappie bait of all time, by a wide margin, and top fish catcher too.

This 2-inch bait has been hailed as the greatest soft plastic bait ever produced; certainly the most versatile. There’s a strong chance that it has caught more total fish than any other soft plastic bait ever made.

Known for its “do less, catch more” realistic action, the Original Baby Shad is as user-friendly as they come. And when Bobby Garland Crappie Baits invented the color Monkey Milk, the original crappie cheat code was born.

Flash-forward to 2026 and the legends of crappie have done it again – baker’s dozen style.

Monkey Milk, color number 203 on the Bobby Garland color chart, is beyond a doubt the most effective pattern ever created for catching crappie. The semi-translucent, pearlescent sheen with small black glitter cracked the code to matching forage and firing up crappie in any environment.

But what if that same irresistible hue was applied to other proven patterns? The color formula gurus at Bobby Garland wanted to answer that question and thus set out on a year-long quest to create nine new crappie cheat codes inspired by the legendary Monkey Milk.

The test dummy - Wanted Monkey started out as a simple combo that added Monkey Milk to the belly of a muddy water favorite color, Outlaw Special. Chartreuse was the OG favorite color of crappie anglers in dozens of patterns before Monkey Milk was invented. The idea was straight-forward enough – combine the two most potent colors in crappie fishing history. As expected, the results were fantastic and Outlaw Special x Monkey Milk spawned Wanted Monkey.

Another simple combo of crappie fishing’s two top selling colors – Blue Ice and Monkey Milk – with a couple subtle modifications. First the “Blue Ice” back was darkened slightly to allow for a bolder contrast in clear water. Then the “Monkey Milk” belly had its traditional small black glitter replaced with holographic silver glitter to compliment the holographic silver string in the back. The result being a perfect “glass minnow.”

The first attempt at adding a “Monkey Milk” hue to two solid colors resulted in the Bobby Garland Brand Manager’s favorite color of the bunch – Slab Juice. Purple is the most underrated color in crappie fishing and purple/chartreuse combos are usually firetails instead of laminates. So, the Garland mixologists set out to create the perfect back/belly balance, and boy did they. Throughout testing, Slab Juice was relentless in enticing every black crappie in its path and absolutely tormented the post-spawn/early summer pattern white crappie.

A natural pattern with golden twist, Almond Milk combines a pale almond back with a semi-translucent, milky belly. The back features the classic small black glitter Monkey Milk is known for, but the belly replaces it with a larger gold glitter that is great in all water conditions, especially on stormy or overcast days. Great match for a wide range of baitfish, most notably fathead minnows and juvenile perch.

Just good ol’ Monkey Milk with an Irish flare. The small black glitter in Monkey Milk was simply replaced with even smaller green glitter, resulting in a perfect clear water catch-all for baitfish patterning.

The perfect gizzard shad. Splatter adds small green and purple glitter for an iridescent shine only a shad mom and hungry crappie could love. Splatter was created for anglers who like a little extra realism in their color patterning. Nothing fancy here – just a good work horse, especially in clear and lightly stained water.

Monkey Milk plus the “kitchen sink” in glitter. Cloudy Daze uses the power of the right glitter combos to create the illusion of an adult gizzard shad’s purple hue. This new color has become a tried-and-true conqueror of the Gulf state’s giants, with great reports coming from the stained and muddy waters across the mid-latitudes.

Red, white and blue with a Texas-sized Monkey Milk attitude, this blueback shad imitator features a semi-translucent, pearlescent belly with small red glitter. Originally designed for East Texas slabs, Lonestar Shad has become a staple across the country since its inception. This “wounded” baitfish pattern excels in both clear and stained water and has become particularly popular during the late winter/prespawn pattern.

Semi-translucent chartreuse with a pearlescent Monkey Milk shine, Sonar Beam is highlighted by small, concentrated flecks of purple and red glitter for a hyper-realistic, stained water presentation. It’s definitely the loudest of the nine Monkey Milk inspired new colors.

Bobby Garland also added their take on four notoriously classic fish catching patterns.

Popular in the North Country for walleye and panfish, Wonder Bread has been a staple color for decades. Featuring the classic red, yellow and blue “spots” of the famed bakery aisle brand, Bobby Garland added a muted twist to enhance its Southern water appeal. A matte white finish, with subtle hints of small and large red, yellow and blue glitter, Wonder Bread has been this winter’s hot color both under the ice and in the frigid open water reservoirs.

Known more as a creek and pond pattern for bass and bream, green pumpkin with red and black glitter is just as potent on slabs. It’s as versatile a color pattern as they come, working well in all water conditions for both black and white crappie. If you’re not thinking shad, this color pattern does a great job of mimicking the widest range of available prey sources in a given body of water, and crappie never pass up the opportunity for an easy meal.

Black is great in stained and muddy water year-round, but with a purple and gold twist, Moon Bug is a stone-cold killer on those bright moon nights in clear water. It also gives added pop on bright days in dirty water, giving crappie two elements of realism to key in on when targeting the dark silhouette.

A subtle cousin to the popular Tennessee Shad pattern, Thump adds a hint of purple flash to the naturally classic color profile. A great all-around forage match in any water condition, Thump just flat out gets thumped and looks good doing it.

If you can get an Original Baby Shad in the water, your odds of catching a fish are higher than anything not actually alive. While designed to fish great straight out of the package, here are a few extra tips from Bobby Garland’s professional fishing staff.

• Glue it or screw it – Lake Fork, TX guide Jerry Hancock is a firm believer that you can catch a limit of crappie on a single Original Baby Shad, despite the bait’s intentionally soft build. “If you put that bait on a screw-lock head or dab some super glue on the nose of that bait with any type of standard jighead, you can easily catch 25+ fish without needing to put on a fresh bait, especially if you’re only around crappie.”
• Shake it – According to 2025 Crappie Masters National Champion Kayle Ward, anglers overwork crappie baits. “If you’re not gonna just dead stick it, which is a good option, just shake the rod tip. It makes the bait flutter naturally. Nothing jumps up and down in the water, and it don’t take much rod tip movement to make that bait move a whole lot more than you think. Just gently shake the rod tip so that tail shakes instead of the whole bait jumping up and down.”
• Slow & Steady – Oklahoma pro Mike Taylor says if you’re casting and retrieving, reel in as slow as possible. “Just enough to keep it moving. Minnows don’t displace much water when they move, they cut through the water. If crappie aren’t aggressive, the Original Baby Shad moves naturally which gets them to respond instead follow.”

2026 CrappieFest will be the biggest crappie event ever held! March 27-29, 2026.

Everything’s bigger in Texas and CrappieFest is no exception. Three full days of fishing, festivals and family-approved fun. CrappieFest kicks off at noon on Friday, March 27 with a FREE Bobby Garland Crappie Baits fish fry beginning at 4 p.m., crappie seminars all day and live music starting at 7 p.m. Cody Cannon of Whiskey Myers headlines the concert series on Saturday night and an hourly big fish tournament wraps up the festivities on Sunday.

Visit CrappieFest for all the details.