From a newbie's POV, it's an excellent idea. I'm in the magazine business and we try and do the same thing whenever possible. They're like entry points into an article, and they're not only useful, but very effective at keeping the reader's attention. Similar to how we read captions and tip boxes before actually diving into an article.
One suggestion would be to give the same treatment to techniques and tips. For example, you guys had two excellent articles on the homepage for awhile (one on fishing the
whitewater), and as you add instructional material like this over the years, you can have jumps to these resources as well. Another example: when someone refers to "jigging" in a post, or even in your product descriptions, you can have it open up a window that explains jigging (I'm still unsure, myself). Make sense?
Keep up the great work...you're spot on with your approach, it's all about building the community (neighborhood) and anything you can do to make the experience good for the new guys makes them more likely to become permanent residents...of the site and the shop. But, then again, I think you guys already know this...