VNDUEEY 700LB Kit — The One to Grab When You're Just Starting Out

My first magnet was a mess. It was a double-sided setup I didn't really understand, and I spent the first two trips mostly fighting the magnet itself — weird retrieval angles, getting it stuck sideways on things I didn't want, nearly dropping it off a bridge railing because I overcorrected. Looking back, I should've just started with a single-sided magnet and learned the basics before going fancy.

That's basically what the VNDUEEY kit is. The simple version. The one you should probably start with.

The magnet itself feels solid when you take it out — heavier than it looks, decent coating, threaded eyebolt that's been fine through repeated throws. I used one of these with my nephew at a small creek outside of town last fall — kid's maybe eleven, thought magnet fishing was going to be like a video game where treasure just appears. It wasn't. But he did pull up two rusted bolts, half a bracket from something, and what I'm pretty confident was a bike pedal that's been down there since the late nineties. He was completely hooked after that. So there's your endorsement from an eleven-year-old.

The rope that comes in the kit is usable. That's about as far as I'll go with that.

It's not terrible — it's thick enough to grip, knots hold reasonably well — but it's the part of the kit I'd replace first if you stick with the hobby. After a few sessions in cold water it starts to feel a little stiff, and the length might feel short once you're fishing off anything higher than a low footbridge. Grab a longer rope when you're ready to upgrade. The magnet itself you can keep using for a long time. The rope is more of a placeholder.

Seven hundred pounds of pull force sounds like a lot. It is a lot, theoretically. In practice — muddy riverbed suction, awkward retrieval angles, whatever physics thing happens when a magnet is lying flat against a steel surface — you're getting less than the rated number in real conditions. That's true of basically every magnet on the market though, and at this price point it's not a complaint, it's just context. You'll still pick up plenty.

The single-sided design is the actual selling point here, and it's undersold.

When you're learning, you want to think about one face of the magnet — the bottom — and not have to worry about what's happening on the sides or top. Single-sided keeps it simple. Drag it along the bottom, feel what sticks, pull it up. The technique basically teaches itself, which is exactly what you want when someone's eight years old and standing on a bridge and you're trying to make sure they don't drop it.

If you already have a magnet and you're looking to upgrade, this probably isn't what you're shopping for. But if you're brand new, or you're buying this for someone who's brand new, it's exactly what it needs to be — cheap enough that it doesn't hurt if you decide the hobby isn't for you, functional enough that you'll actually find stuff on your first few trips.