Magnetar Bulldog 800 Double Sided — The Real Deal

I'll be honest — I was a little skeptical of the 1,940 lb number when I first saw it. Pull force claims in this hobby are all over the place, and I've been burned before by magnets that technically hit their listed force in a lab setting but feel weirdly weak the moment they're at an angle on a sloped surface. So I went into the Bulldog 800 with my guard up.

Then I dropped it off the Riverside Street bridge on the Passaic and it grabbed something on the way down before I'd even started retrieving. A chunk of rebar — not huge, but not nothing — just stuck on the bottom face while the top face was already doing its thing. That's the double-sided design working exactly like it's supposed to, and it's one of those moments where you go okay, I get it now.

The magnet itself is dense. Heavier than I expected.

Magnetar is a weird brand to describe because they only make magnet fishing gear — no crossover into camping stuff, no random survival kits to pad their catalog. Everything they make is specifically for this hobby, and you can feel that in the Bulldog. The threading is clean, the coating feels purposeful rather than painted-on, and the eyebolt doesn't wobble. Small stuff, but it adds up when you've messed with cheaper gear long enough to notice the difference.

The double-sided setup means you're getting pull force working on both the drop and the retrieve — which sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but a lot of single-sided setups just drag dead weight on the way down. I've left stuff on river bottoms because my magnet only picked up on the retrieve and whatever I hit was already behind me by the time it had traction. The Bulldog doesn't let that happen the same way. Not never — the river doesn't care about your magnet specs — but noticeably less often.

It is $174.99. That's real money.

I wouldn't hand this to someone who's done two sessions and wants to upgrade immediately. The pull force at this level is serious enough that you need to know what you're doing with the rope and the retrieval — I've seen people get yanked forward on bridges because they weren't ready for a heavy hit. Get some reps in first. But if you've been fishing long enough to have a system, to know how you tie your knots and how you walk a bridge railing, this magnet will make you better at the thing you're already doing.

The price is justified by the build and the brand focus, but you do have to actually need this level of power before it makes sense. For what it is — a purpose-built, double-sided flagship from a company that literally only does this — the Bulldog 800 earns it.