Short Stuff: Magnet Fishing

Magnet fishing has nothing to do with fish. It's more like metal detecting in waterways. Please enjoy our take!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and this short stuff. As I said already,
and this is short stuff, so let's go. So when
I was a kid, I don't know if your dad
ever did this. Something tells me your dad may have
had a brief foray into metal detecting. Yea. It seemed
to be maybe a little bit of a I don't

(00:25):
know about fat or craze if it was that widespread,
But I know quite a few of us in our
age group who's mothers and fathers. For some reason, more
fathers than mothers, uh, and there were generally more mothers
going seriously like, you're kind of spent three hours on
the beach doing that, uh, roaming around the beaches and
forest of America with a metal detector hoping to In

(00:48):
my dad's case, I think he was probably hoping to
strike it rich was some rare find. Yeah. I think
all of them were secretly some of them might have
tried to play like you know, they were really just
in it for the science or whatever, but they were
hoping to find some roaming horde for some reason in Indiana,
And I thought it was cool at the time. Because
I would do anything to to try and get my

(01:10):
dad to pay attention to me. So I would tag
along and I would metal detect right alongside of him,
and I thought it was pretty cool. Uh. And I
found myself when I heard about magnet fishing just recently
I learned that this is a thing, saying, oh, wow,
that looks like something I might want to try. And
then I went, oh my god, I've become my father. Yeah,

(01:30):
where you like, maybe I'll strike it rich. No, but
I just think it's kind of kind of cool and fun. Well,
the idea of it. I think you can get into it,
and it will be easy to get into because the
barriers for getting into magnet fishing our purposefully kept low
so that everybody can't get into it. Because it's supposed

(01:51):
to be really fun past time, and we should tell
everybody what magnet fishing is. I mean, if there's ever
been a term that we needed to define, it's magnet fishing.
Are you fishing for magnets? Yes, are using magnet magnets
to try and get a fish out of a lake. Yeah,
there's so much mercury and fish now that you can
magnets to catch them. No, that's what not when magnet

(02:12):
fishing is magnet fishing is having a rope tied to
a dope, very strong magnet magnet, which we'll talk about
what these magnets are and how they work and stuff
and that, and dropping it in a canal or a
river or a lake or off of a bridge into
any of these bodies of water, dragging it along and

(02:33):
hoping that you pull up uh something cool or valuable
or both. Where does the dope come in? I don't know.
I guess you should well never mind, So yeah, I
can use my imagination. So um from looking at on YouTube,
what I've seen, more often than not, what comes out

(02:55):
of the lake or the river the canal is not
anything most people would want to touch. So I think
like being a magnet fisherman, you're you're you have to
be fascinated by icky things, rusty things that were once
not rusty or ikey, and that the fact that they're
underwater now makes them by nature interesting to magnet fishers. Yeah.

(03:19):
And this is, by the way, comes from our old
colleagues at house stuff works dot com and they aptly
point out that this is pretty it's it's caught on
here in America pretty well, especially during the pandemic. They
did interview someone who in our own state of Georgia
who opened a magnet place to like kind of furnish
supplies for people, and he was like, man, this it's

(03:41):
like during the pandemic and during lockdown, things really blew
up because you can socially distance. It got people out
of the house. It really passes the time something you
can take your kid and do. So it's really been
booming in the States in the past couple of years,
but it's long been popular in Europe, and for good
reason because Europe is old are and they're more interesting

(04:01):
fines and you're way more likely to find some old
unexploded munition that you might want on yourself, even though
it's very dangerous then you might in America. Yeah, we
should buzz market that dude too, because he seems okay.
But brute magnetics in North Georgia. Yeah, Clay Copeland, so
um what what they've put together are And he's actually

(04:25):
the reason that I said that this is this um
hobbies being kept accessible purposefully because the he said that
the most powerful magnet that they sell, the top of
the line can pull over two thousand pounds of metal
out of whatever waterway you're fishing in. Um, it's still

(04:47):
only like two dollars. Yeah, not bad for a hobby. No,
And if you stop and think about it, you could,
like there's a two thousand pound piece of metal that's
getting close to like a car, you know, didn't it.
I don't know how much carve's way. I don't know,
Like two thousand pounds is what I'm guessing. Probably the
topped out at two thousand pounds, so like a hummer

(05:08):
probably weighs two thousand pounds. Okay, I think that might
be wrong. But the point is this, there's a two
thousand pound magnet or a magnet that can pull two
thousand pounds or two hundred bucks. That's a good deal. Okay,
that is a good deal. Uh. You know, any kind
of hobby when you're buried or entries a couple of
hundred dollars and you could spend hours and hours like
with your kids or something, not bad at all. You

(05:31):
should be sure of a few things. One that you
have that you're really good at tying knots, because what
you don't want to do is lose that magnet and
then have to get a magnet to fish out that
magnet so be good, really good at tying knots. You
want to a rope that's fifty two d feet depending
on you know, if you're obviously dropping off a bridge,
you're gonna want the longer rope. And I saw that

(05:51):
nylon pair record is a really good option because it's
like a thicker one because it's it's got that perfect
mix of tough toughness and elastic city. And the magnets
that you would buy two are not your normal refrigerator magnets,
which are made of fair rite um. The ones that Mr.
Copeland cells are made of neodymium, is how I'm going

(06:14):
to say it. I think that's right. And neodymium is
a it's a rare earth metal and they mix it
with a boron an iron and it's just again super strong,
Like you're not going to pull anything approaching two thousand
pounds with a a refrigerator magnet, even if it's super
super big um. And that's the point. You want to
fairly compact magnet that is also designed in a streamline

(06:38):
manner so it's not gonna get hooked up on all
sorts of muck. And kelp and seaweed and all that
stuff too. Should we take a break? I think so
we're really just getting started with magnet fishing. Everybody, all right,
We'll be right back by the way during our break.

(07:16):
I just looked it up. The average weight of a
car is about pounds, okay, so I think like one
of those smart cars maybe about two thousand pounds. I'll
take smart car. It's basically the same thing as a hummer. Uh.
And before I forget the other thing I meant to
mention on what you might need to get started is
a tetna shot. I mean, it's kind of funny to say,

(07:37):
but that is no joke because you are pulling old,
rusty things out of the water inevitably, and that's the
nature of magnets and metal and being underwater. So you
do want a tetna shot and to have like some
like gloves and stuff like that. You also want to
have um some common decency because one of the reasons

(07:57):
that um some magnet fishers fisher people have a bad
reputation in some places like the UK and Germany are
apparently two places where they kind of frown upon magnefishing
because people magnetfish pull out some metallic junk that they
don't want and just like leave it on the side
of the river or the sidewalk that like the walking

(08:18):
path alongside a canal or something like that. Kind of
get the impression that if you haul something out, it's
up to you to either keep it or throw it away,
not just leave it there, yes, or turn in in
the case of unexploded munitions, if you find an old
World War two hand grenade or bullets. I mean, it

(08:39):
seems like I looked up a lot of these fines
and stuff, and it is disturbing how many weapons are
in bags in rivers. Uh. It really makes you wonder
why it's in there. But lots of guns are found,
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of bullets are found.

(09:01):
I saw one where this little six year old girl
and her parents pulled six hundred bullets out of a lake. Uh.
And like I said, like a K forty seven someone
found a Tommy gun. Wow, that's a pretty good find.
That's revolver pretty good. Fine, But you know people are
dumping dangerous things, uh era like Civil War era swords.

(09:25):
Pretty good fine, Um, but there are dangerous things down there. Uh,
and if anything is unexploded, don't just I think the
assumption is it's always dangerous, so you should probably get
in touch with somebody about it. Yeah, and that's especially
true in Europe, where a lot of World War Two
artillery and ammunition. Until welighing around. Yeah, um, I saw

(09:47):
a blog post Chuck that I guess I hadn't heard
about the Tommy gun because it was called like the
the greatest magnet fishing fines of all time, really, and
one of them was like a bench, like a park bench,
and the caption was who couldn't use a free bench?
Like they were really trying to sell? So I guess
that the Tommy gun hadn't been found yet. I saw

(10:09):
one guy who there was a picture of him holding
up a machine gun standing beside no why. It was
either eight or ten of those stupid rental scooters electric scooters.
People just throw those in bodies of water. Yeah, and
shopping carts too. You know who does that? People did? Teenagers?

(10:31):
I saw one guy found a human body that had
handcuffs on. No, yes, no, yes, boy. I used the
wrong search terms for magnat fishing fines because I didn't
see anything like that. I just searched for like most
interesting fines A body with handcuffs? Are you for real? Yeah?
I mean you know that's what this one goofy website said. Goodness, wow,

(10:55):
that was pretty much my worst fear when I was
a young STERVEYK. Shanning in Lake Erie. Yes. Yeah, and
just bumping into a body that I just knew was
out there five feet away from me, headed right towards me.
The idea of finding one magnet. Oh my god, I'm
gonna have to go like chill out for a little
bit before we record our next short stuff. Well, could

(11:17):
you imagine they're pulling this thing out and it's it's
coming up handcuff first, So either around the ankles, are
around the wrist. Yeah. So I mean that's that's a
pretty crucome discovery. Yeah good Lauren, Well thanks for ending
it like that. Sure, Well, we're not quite done. It's um.
I just wanted to say how discouraging it is that
people are pulling out so much trash. It's great the

(11:40):
people that are doing this to pull out the trash
and dispose of it. Well, but as I was researching
this yesterday, Emily texted me that our house is next
to sort of this bamboo forest with a creek, and
she saw a truck pull over and throw a gigantic
microwave into the creek and speed off and it Now

(12:00):
I have to go fish that microwave out. She got
his license plate. But I'm like, what are you gonna do?
You know, over to be like the cops in the
Big Lebowski. Oh yeah, we got a whole team of
guys working on it. But now I gotta go fish
this microwave about it Just there's no way I can
let it sit there. You're gonna get yourself a two
dollar magnet magnet from Mr Clay Copeland of Brute Magnetics.

(12:23):
I probably should, because that'd be the easiest way to
do it, and it would be legal in Georgia. Legality wise,
we should mention that it's everywhere so far except for
South Carolina. It is legal because in South Carolina it
falls under the South Carolina Underwater Antiques Act, which prohibits
you from collecting things with equipment deployed from the surface

(12:45):
of the water. And that even means magnets. Yeah, especially magnets,
is what I heard. Yeah, in Europe is a little
more controlled, not controlling, but they have more restrictions in
things in place. Right. Yeah, again, there's a lot of
unexploded ordinance. It's just the right age to blow up
in your face accidentally when you're inspecting it to figure
out what it is. That's right, So it makes sense.

(13:07):
So that's magnetficient. Go forth, check out brute magnetics. Get
yourself a magnet and throw away the stuff you don't want.
Don't throw it back or just leave it on the
side of the road. Okay, uh, that's it for short stuff.
Since Chuck agreed, that's official. See you later. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For

(13:30):
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.