Free or Low-Cost Outdoor Ideas for Children #1: Magnet Fishing

TV has evolved so much over the years, and it never ceases to amaze me just what you can watch and access now you can link them to the Internet. I had 4 channels growing up, but these days, you can have thousands, and this opens up to even more when you have access to YouTube too! We have a little ‘rule’ in our house – on Fridays, provided they’ve been good at school all week, the boys can watch YouTube Kids once they’re all ready for school. This usually results in the fastest movement we see all week! Usually they watch what I would consider ‘trash’: other children opening boxes of toys, playing with their toys, or commentating their movements as they play on a games console. Having heard stories where dodgy videos have slipped through the net, I’m usually very close by keeping an eye on things, and one day, they were watching something completely different!

Magnet Fishing

In this series of videos, a chap was stood by a river (in Canada I believe) and pulling out all sorts of weird metallic objects using a magnet! I’d never heard of this “sport,” and I was as fixed to the TV as the boys by this point, eagerly awaiting the next ‘treasure’ to be pulled from water. In fact, I was so taken by this activity that after dropping the boys at school, I went on the hunt for a magnet fishing kit.

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I headed straight to Amazon and, honestly, was a little overwhelmed by the options! I thought this would be some weird niche hobby, and perhaps there would be half a dozen kits to choose from, if that, but there were actually hundreds! I knew the key here would be something with a strong magentic pull (water adds a lot of resistance) but I didn’t want to spend a fortune either, so I settled on this Uolor Magentic Fishing kit, which had great reviews and was within my budget range.

The beauty of having so many to choose from is that there really is a choice for most budget ranges, and of course, once you have the kit, you can keep reusing it, so it’s excellent value for money!

What you need

• Magnet Kit The first thing you need is the magnet kit. This is just the magnet and a decent length of rope. My chosen magnet had a pull force of 160Kg, which has been excellent so far, and a rope of 20m. Again, we’ve found this length fine for our activities.
• Gloves I highly recommend that whoever is extracting the objects from the magnet has a decent pair of gloves, ideally ones used for cutting. Sharp nails and razer edged pieces of small shrapnel regularly attach themselves to our magnet and have to be scooped off – you don’t want to be trying to get these off a strong magnet with bare hands! If the children want to handle the items, I’d also recommend gloves for them as well, just because you never know what’s on them (sorry, such a ‘Mum’ comment!)
• Old (strong) bag You’ll need a bag to pop in everything you collect. We used a typical supermarket shopping tote, which turned out to be totally overkill for our finds haha! Everyone’s views are different, but I personally feel that everything we pull out shouldn’t go back into the water (a mini clean up operation if you will!) so we take everything we find back to our recycling bin.
• Camera/camera phone If your children get as excited as ours do over some of their finds, you’re going to want to take a photo of them holding their ‘prizes’! I love collecting reminders of things we do, so i also photographed them and took a couple of videos them having a go themselves. It’s always nice to look back on in the future.

Finding your Fishing Ground!

For us, the obvious choice was the canal, as it is just under a mile from where we live. We were eager to use the magnet on the day it arrived, but our youngest was poorly, so the eldest went out with Dad to give it a whirl. They were gone for well over an hour, including their walk to and back, but they were mostly unsuccessful in ‘interesting finds’, with just nails and shrapnel coming up (See the “big nail” above, right, for their “best” find of the day!).

When we went back to the canal again, I suggested a different spot, where I had seen a sinking narrowboat the year before, and thought this would be a fantastic place to pull up some interesting treasures … I was wrong! That said, along with what seemed like hundreds of nails and bits of shrapnel, we also found around a dozen AA/AAA batteries, a tin can (that still had baked beans inside!) And what looked like a large mooring ring (above, left)!

Safety first!

A few things to take into consideration before you head out … this is such a fun activity but there are elements of caution or etiquette which you should be made aware of.

• Don’t trespass, use places with public access or ask the owner if it’s OK if you want to head onto private land.

• Find a quiet spot. Avoid areas busy with, or regularly frequented by, other people. This is purely because you don’t want to accidently elbow someone as you’re pulling out something heavy – and you certainly don’t want to be launching a heavy magnet into water where people are swimming!

• Be careful throwing the magnet in. If you let the children thrown the magnet in, just be careful they don’t (a) follow the magnet into the water and (b) throw it skywards. (Sometimes children’s throws can be released too late and everything flys right above your head instead of going forwards 🫣)

• Always make sure a responsible adult is present! For younger children, be ready to help pull that magnet back in. We always have an adult holding the end of the rope (just in case that flies in with the magnet when they throw it) but for smaller children, the effort needed to pull it back up might cause them to topple.

• Water safety! Following on from the above, always be cautious near the waters edge, especially near deep water, unstable sides, or when a child isn’t a strong swimmer. Ideally place yourself near a life ring or have a strong adult swimmer in the group!

• Be careful what you touch! I know I mentioned it above, but make sure anyone touching or removing the ‘treasure’ has a decent set of gloves, ideally cut resistant ones.

Our thoughts on Magnet Fishing

Despite the disappointment in what we found, the activity on the whole was a real hit. All through the hour or so we were out, there was much excitement at the anticipation at what would come out. There were laughs a plenty at what we found, in particular when our youngest kept pulling out AA batteries, and then our eldest pulled out the can of half eaten beans, which splattered everywhere! We’ve only tried this along the canal as we don’t have much access to other places with water, but now we have invested in the kit, it’s on hand whenever we do go adventuring somewhere with water. It’s such a small kit, albeit a little heavy, that we tend to carry it around when we go places in the car, on the off chance we might find somewhere to use it. For the price point, it’s great value for money, as you can use it again and again, and its something the whole family can enjoy together!

Have you tried Magnet Fishing – or even heard of it before? Did you enjoy it? What were your best finds?

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Magnet Fishing can be a fun activity, provided sensible precautions are taken, especially being near water. I cannot be held responsible for any accidents or injuries that occur if you decide to give it a go! Please be careful out there 🙂