Grtard 1000LB Double Sided Kit — Worth the $28?

Here's the thing about double-sided magnets — they're not magic, but they do matter. A single-sided magnet can only grab what it's facing. Double-sided means you're fishing up and down at the same time, which sounds small until you're dragging along a harbor floor and your magnet rolls onto its side and suddenly picks up something from underneath a dock beam you'd never have touched otherwise. That's happened to me more times than I can count. So when I see a double-sided kit under $30, I don't immediately roll my eyes.

I do raise one eyebrow though.

Grtard isn't a brand I've got years of experience with. That's the honest version. The names you trust in this hobby — Brute, Wukong, a few others — they've got track records. Grtard is newer to my rotation, and I want to be upfront about that because it shapes everything I say next.

When I opened this one up, the magnet itself felt... fine? Not impressive, not alarming. The coating was intact, the threading looked clean, nothing came loose when I gave it a firm hand-tightening. I've opened budget kits where the eyebolt was already starting to strip before I'd even tied my first knot — that wasn't the case here. Small thing, but it counts.

I took it out to a stretch of the Ohio River I'd worked before — decent current, some silty bottom, a few old bridge supports nearby that tend to collect interesting stuff. Rusted bolts, a hinge that was probably off a dock gate, what looked like a very old crowbar that I'm going to estimate has been down there since roughly 1971. The magnet grabbed all of it without complaint. Nothing dramatic, nothing that would push even a decent single-sided to its limits — but that's also kind of the point. Most outings aren't dramatic. You're fishing in mud, in slow water, hoping to snag something that's been sitting long enough to rust solid to the riverbed.

The rope situation is where I'd pump the brakes a little. It's usable. It's not great. If you're doing a lot of bridge drops or working deeper water, I'd honestly swap it out for something you trust more before a real session. The rope that comes with budget kits like this is usually fine for calm, shallow pulls — less fine when you've got a good snag and you're leaning hard over a railing.

The 1000LB claim I take the same way I take all claimed pull force numbers — with a grain of salt and a reminder that lab conditions are not river conditions. Real-world performance on something like this is going to be a fraction of that in the mud. That's not a knock on Grtard specifically, that's just how it works across the board.

So who's this actually for?

Honestly — someone who specifically wants double-sided and has a hard ceiling around $30. If you're newer to this and you've watched enough videos to know you want the dual-sided setup, but you're not ready to drop $50 or $60 on a kit you might decide isn't for you after three outings, this makes sense. It also makes sense as a backup kit. I keep a secondary setup in my truck for exactly the situations where I don't want to risk my main rig — sketchy bridge with no good recovery angle, a friend who wants to try it, that kind of thing. At $28 I don't feel bad about that.

What I'd want to see from Grtard going forward is more time in the field — mine and everyone else's. The build on this kit isn't bad for the price. But brand trust takes reps, and this one's still earning them.