(Editor's note: "Catching Bass with Dustin Wilks" airs five times per week on Sportsman Channel – 2 p.m. ET Sunday, 4:30 a.m. Monday, 6 a.m. Tuesday, 11:30 a.m. Wednesday and 5:30 a.m. Saturday. The six-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier writes about various aspects of the sport in these periodic submissions.)
About a week ago, I got a call from Eco-Pro Tungsten, one of my show sponsors, asking if I had a show air with their Pro Wacky Weight. They said they were having sales come in from all over the country all at once. This is typical of how sales go for a cool new or unique product that gets some TV time. But in this case, it wasn’t me.
That got me thinking. I use the weight all the time, but haven’t yet done a show with one, so I really ought to introduce my audience to such a cool piece of tackle. So I did a Facebook post and it got instant feedback. That one post reached 17,000 fishermen and got over 1,000 likes and tons of questions and comments in just a few days. But there is something much better than socials – a golden nugget that comes once a month.
The Eco-Pro Pro Wacky Weight is a small, disc-shaped piece of tungsten with a wire you pop through a worm or soft plastic of your choice and insert the hook though the wire, and then use a keeper like a spinnerbait tube or a Bait Button to keep it from flying off (some guys even use a hole punch and poke out little pieces of drink bottles for this).
With this setup, armed with all different weights, you can easily adapt your wacky-rig fishing to any depth or fall rate you want. You can quickly get the weight you need to reach fish in heavy winds, or get that bait a little farther under overhead cover. You can fit it with whatever hook you want, which is also great because different lures all have different diameters and it is easy to fine-tune.
One of the best things is you hardly ever lose a piece of plastic. I can’t speak for the really salty ones that might tear easily if a fish grabs just half of it, but standard plastics like the Culprit T-Rex have, on multiple occasions for me, caught close to 20 fish before I lost the worm. I suspect with even the super-salty ones like a Senko you will catch a lot more fish per bait than normal.
So what in the world caused all those sales? I open my mailbox, pull out my May "Bass Special" issue of In-Fisherman Magazine and read it cover to cover. Lo and behold there it was .. Steve Quinn is a fan of the Eco-Pro Wacky Weight and uses it regularly. He highlighted how he uses the 3/16-ounce version in 12 feet of water when the bite gets tough. He even coined a name for the technique – “Snug Shotting"
So there you go – magazines are definitely not dead. One little snippet of a unique product got sales really going for Eco-Pro. This undoubtably happens with some cool products every month.
When I’m reading a magazine, I’m learning stuff I didn’t even know I needed to know. They are somehow on top of every cool piece of tackle for all species. That is what I love about magazines, especially In-Fishermen. But as always, I skip the catfish articles.
