Magnet fishing is about treasure and trash collecting BY TRAVIS GRIMLER
What's one part treasure hunting and two, maybe three parts trash collecting? If you answered magnet fishing, you hit the nail right on the head. Just make sure to take it with you when you leave, OK? I took up magnet fishing last year, as soon as the snow melted. I had spent the last month or more of winter reaching out to private businesses with popular docks, asking for permission to throw my magnet into the waters there looking for whatever lay on the depths. By the time the ice was gone, I had a magnet with 900 pounds of pull and a list of places to toss it, not to mention lots of competition. Magnet fishing is a growing hobby with more and more people sharing magnet fishing videos online, posting their finds to magnet fishing Facebook groups and secretly collecting the good stuff before anyone else can. The hobby is particularly popular in more populous areas. Tyler McAllister, formerly of Backus, brought the hobby with him when he went to school in Duluth. He first read about magnet fishing on Reddit, a social media platform with topics on everything under the sun. He quickly learned that it's best to start with the strongest magnet you can afford. "I was kind of naive back then. I got like a 50-pound magnet at a hardware store and tried going with that," McAllister said. "I caught maybe a lure, but nothing else." I learned the same lesson when I started with a 160-pound magnet when the water was only open at the dam in Pine River. I did manage to catch a jig head, and since then I consider a trip out successful so long as I find even one jig head. CONTINUED ON PAGE 46 28 | 2021 LOVE OF THE LAKES
