Russ Traber is an avid weekend ice fisherman who used to use a basic rig with a flag to reel in his winter catch, until he and his brother found a new approach.
Inspired by an oil rig, the battery operated outfit bobs up and down to catch a fish, and when it’s caught one, it lets out a reel and a strobe light comes on.
Once he was satisfied with the way it worked, Traber made a few more.
“I built 15 of them and thought, ‘Okay, how am I going to sell them?'” he said.
“I put them on Kijiji, and then thought, ‘let’s just do a Facebook post.'”
But he didn’t realize how many people would take the bait.
“A day later I got a text from someone that said, ‘Wow, you got 770 views.’ And I’m going like, ‘Uh, that’s a lot!'” Traber said.
“First it was at 300,000 views and then the second day it kept climbing and climbing,” Traber’s step son, Tom Indenbosch said.
“Every five minutes the numbers were just jumping like crazy and by the fourth day he had a million hits, within one week he had 1.3 million hits on there.”
Indenbosch said within three days, Traber’s phone was getting hot.
“With the amount of calls texts and emails that were coming in, he didn’t know what to do with it all.”
“The comments on Facebook and everything,” Traber said, “They’re just blown away by something like this and I’m going, ‘I didn’t think it was that exciting, but I guess it is!'”
“Nonetheless, I sold all 15 of them!” Traber said laughing.
Ultimately he hopes someone will buy the the concept.
“They’d say, ‘You know what, we’re gonna help you out, take this off your hands.'”
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