Magnetar 2000LB Double Sided Kit — Worth the Upgrade?
The Magnetar 2000LB Double Sided Kit is a premium magnet fishing setup built for people who've outgrown their starter gear and want something that actually performs at depth.
I'll be straight with you — $184.99 is real money for a magnet fishing kit. But if you've been running a budget double-sided for a while and you keep feeling like you're leaving stuff behind, this is the jump that actually makes sense.
The Magnetar 2000LB is built for people who already know what they're doing and are tired of gear that fakes the numbers. It's not a starter kit dressed up fancy. It's a legitimate step up.
If someone in your life just found magnet fishing on TikTok last week, this isn't the one. But if you've been at it a season or two and you want to stop wondering whether your magnet is the bottleneck — this is worth looking at.
When this thing showed up, the first thing I noticed was the weight. Not in a bad way — just that immediate sense that something is actually dense and not hollow. I've unboxed enough cheap kits to know the difference between a magnet that feels substantial and one that's just a heavy-ish disc with optimistic numbers printed on the side. This one felt like the real thing before I'd even gotten it out of the packaging.
And it held up to that first impression, which honestly isn't always how it goes.
I took it out to a bridge I've been working on and off — a spot over a slow-moving river in the midwest that's been dropping bikes, tools, and apparently an entire shopping cart's worth of hardware into the water since probably the 1960s. I've pulled decent stuff out of there before, but with my old setup I'd occasionally get a hit that would just... slide off. That thing was there, I could feel it, and then it wasn't. You know the feeling. With the Magnetar I went back to a section I'd basically written off and came up with a thick pipe wrench and something that might've been a hinge from a door — both solid, both stuck hard.
The double-sided design is the whole point here. You're fishing down and you're fishing as you drag, which means you're not just hunting the bottom of the riverbed, you're catching stuff on the retrieve too. I've been fishing double-sided for a while now and I wouldn't go back to single, but not all double-sided magnets are created equal. The coating on this one is noticeably better than the budget options I've used — no visible gaps at the edge, nothing that makes you nervous about saltwater or prolonged submersion.
The rope situation is solid. Better than what I was running before.
Here's my one honest gripe: the case, if the kit includes one, is always the afterthought with these things — Magnetar included. It's fine. It does the job. But I've started keeping my magnet in a separate setup anyway because I got tired of cases that felt like they'd crack if you looked at them wrong in February. That's a minor thing, and your mileage may vary depending on how rough you are with your kit bag.
The pull force claim — 2000LB — is always a conversation. These numbers are theoretical, tested under laboratory conditions that have nothing to do with silt-covered rebar or an awkward dragging angle. What I can tell you is that this magnet grabs and holds better than anything in the sub-$100 range I've tested. Whether that's 800 actual pounds or 1200, I don't know and I don't care. It performs. That's the whole test.
Magnetar has a reputation in this space for a reason. They're not the only premium brand worth looking at, but they're consistent — and at this price point, consistent matters. You're not gambling on whether the threading holds or whether the epoxy was applied by someone who cared.
This is the kit I'd hand someone who already knows how to fish and is tired of wondering if their gear is the problem.
