LOVIMAG 150lb Cup Magnets — A Different Kind of Build

Okay so here's the thing about these. They showed up in a little box — smaller than I expected, which honestly happens every time with cup magnets and I never learn — and the first thing I noticed was that there's no eyebolt. No obvious place to tie a rope. Just a clean steel housing with a screw hole in the back, like something you'd pull out of a speaker cabinet.

Which is kind of the whole point.

If you've ever bought a standard fishing magnet and thought "I wish this mounted differently," these are for you. The cup magnet design with a screw attachment opens up a different world of rigging. I've got a buddy who built a multi-magnet sled out of aluminum angle stock — three of these mounted in a row, facing down, dragged along the bottom of a drainage canal outside of town. He pulled up a corroded padlock, half a bike frame, and something that had the general shape of a muffler. The screw mount is what made that rig possible. A standard eyebolt magnet wouldn't have worked for what he was trying to do.

For solo use, straight off a rope? These aren't really designed for that. The screw attachment is strong if you've got it properly mounted into something solid, but it's not the move if you just want to drop a magnet off a bridge on a Saturday afternoon. That's not a knock — it's just what they are.

The waterproofing held up fine. Dropped them in about four feet of water, left them down there for a bit while I was retying a knot, pulled them back up and nothing looked unhappy. 150 lbs of pull force is real — not groundbreaking for magnet fishing, but for $9.99 a pop, you're not going to find a better deal for what you're getting.

The screws that come with them are fine. Nothing to write home about.

Here's where I'd pump the brakes a little though. If you're new to this and you just want to go magnet fishing — like, actually go do the thing — I'd point you toward something with a proper eyebolt and a rope included. The DIYMAG 350lb kit is what I'd push most beginners toward, and it's not even that much more money. These LOVIMAG cup magnets are for a specific use case, and that use case is "I have a project."

But if you do have a project? They're cheap enough to experiment with. Mess up the mounting, strip a screw, whatever — buy another set. That's the upside of something this affordable. You can afford to get it wrong once while you figure out what you're actually building.

The cup magnet format also sits flat against a surface in a way that a standard fishing magnet doesn't, which changes how the pull force works in practice. It's not better or worse — it's different. And sometimes different is exactly what you need when you're trying to build something that doesn't exist yet.