In three and a half years of magnet fishing, Phil Styles tells me he has pulled over 80 knives, 40 guns and two live hand grenades from waterways across the UK.
He adds that he has also pulled up over a hundred safes, a hospital bed and close to 30 tonnes of scrap metal – roughly the weight of two double decker buses. Styles is one of thousands of people across the UK who have taken up magnet fishing, a hobby that is uncovering the mysterious depths of the UK’s rivers and canals.
YouTube first inspired Styles to invest in a length of rope, gloves and a neodymium magnet. He soon set up the magnet fishing YouTube channel Brummies Outdoors, which now has 27.8k subscribers. The channel’s most popular video has 2.2 million views.
“Every time you throw the magnet in you have no idea what’s going to come out of that water,” Styles says.
It’s a sentiment shared by William Nixon, founder of the family-orientated magnet fishing group Leeds Magneters. Nixon runs the YouTube channel of the same name and is a regular on the canals with his young sons Leo, five, and Riley, seven.
Nixon says it’s the “excitement” and “adrenaline” that has got him and his family hooked on the hobby. “Anything that you can realistically think of that’s made of metal, we’ve had out,” he says.
Leeds Magneters founder William Nixon with his sons in Manchester.
When I go to meet Nixon on a stretch of canal in Manchester, Leo casts his magnet and pulls a pink vibrator out of the canal. The three of them have barely been there 30 minutes, and a laptop, two burner phones, a machete, two discarded safes (cracked, empty) and a full CCTV equipment setup already sit neatly stacked on the towpath beside them.
Ten minutes later Riley reels in his magnet with a Nokia 3310 and a kitchen knife attached. Nixon has brought a selection of his best finds to show me, which include a pre-WWII fireman’s axe, two WWII knives (one British, one German) and a cannonball which dates back to the 1700s.
Many of the magnet fishing “hotspots” correspond, as one might expect, to areas previously home to heavy industry, munitions sites and densely populated areas. The fishers tend to stick to canals rather than rivers because they are safer and easier to fish in and access. On top of that, the canal network is, in national terms, concentrated and offers more spots to explore with less overall travel.
Nixon with what appears to be a rusty machete. Photo: Davey Brett
Items that Nixon had found but was unable to bring with him included an artillery shell, a grenade and an arsenal of guns ranging from pistols and WWII machine guns to pre-war hunting rifles. The police, with the help of the bomb squad, have either destroyed or confiscated those. Found firearms or explosives must be reported to the police, and while there’s a law stating that technically pre-1910 guns for which ammunition can’t be sourced can be returned – assuming the finder is willing to pay for decommissioning – everyone I spoke to told me it’s extremely rare for the police to give any gun back.
The origins of magnet fishing in the UK go back roughly six years. A select few took on the hobby and YouTube channels popped up documenting their finds. A video of magnet fishing YouTuber Drasticg pulling out a Honda motorbike from a canal in Manchester currently has 4.6 million views, which offers some idea of the magnet fishing world’s booming audience.
Two knives and a gun pulled out by Brummies Outdoors. Photo: courtesy of Phil Styles
Magnet fishing is legal, but an associated British Waterways byelaw – rarely, if ever, enforced – prohibits removing “art
