Leigh’s top 10 magnet fishing finds of the year

1. The Herring River Bridge gun

Nate Demontigny’s pull in West Harwich, Massachusetts, was the kind of find that stops a session cold. After he cleaned off the crustation, the gun looked like a World War Two Luger, which is exactly why bridge approaches and river spans keep paying off for magnet fishers: they collect both lost metal and the stories that cling to it.

2. The Falkirk World War Two mortar

The Falkirk canal recovery was bigger than a cool object on the bank, because a bomb squad had to be called after magnet fishers brought up a World War Two mortar. That is the clearest example in this year’s crop of a hard rule for the hobby: the best-looking iron can turn into the most serious kind of problem the second it leaves the water.

3. The five machetes from Glasgow

A father and son in Glasgow hauled up five machetes in one magnet-fishing run, and the sheer count is what makes it stand out. This was not a single unusual scrap pull, but a concentrated stash, the sort of recovery that tells you some waterways function less like random drops and more like dumping grounds for sharp metal.

4. The meat cleaver from the Glasgow canal

The meat cleaver in that same Scottish canal haul sharpened the story even further, because it pushed the pull from rough junk into the territory of a household weapon. In practical terms, that is the kind of object that rewards patient sweeping close to the bottom, where heavier flat metal settles and waits for a strong connection.

5. The butcher knives from the same Glasgow haul

The butcher knives rounded out the Glasgow recovery and made it clear the magnet was finding a cluster, not a one-off. When multiple blades come up together, the bank tells you something about how quickly one stretch of water can become a hidden repository for discarded or deliberately dumped metal.

6. The weapons-and-bombs pattern across Scottish waterways

Glasgow magnet fishers have already pulled weapons and bombs from bodies of water across Scotland, and that wider pattern is what puts the individual finds in context. The strongest magnet-fishing spots are often not scenic wilderness pieces at all, but urban waterways with a long memory, where old losses and old danger sit side by side.

7. The historic-treasure hunt heading into 2025

The Glasgow group’s push toward historic artifacts in 2025 shows how the hobby keeps toggling between cleanup and discovery. That mix is exactly why these finds travel so well, because the same canal that yields a weapon can also hint at local history, and the line between relic and risk is often thinner than the mud on the magnet.

8. Evan Woodward’s Baltimore cleanup finds

Baltimore’s Magnet Fishing Club, led by Evan Woodward, uses the hobby to clean up the city while uncovering historic artifacts, and that pairing gives the work a public face. It is also the most shareable version of the pastime, because people instantly understand the appeal of pulling history out of a hometown waterway instead of just another hunk of scrap.

9. Leigh’s year-end curation across multiple methods

Leigh’s roundup works because he comes at treasure hunting from more than one angle, including scuba diving, metal detecting, and magnet fishing. That broader toolkit matters, since the year’s best moments are not only about what came up, but about how the search moved from one method to another until the water gave something back.

10. The real lesson from the year’s biggest pulls

Taken together, the strongest finds all point to the same practical truth: bridges, canals, and city waterways are the places where magnet fishers are most likely to hit something memorable, whether that means a crusted-over pistol, a wartime mortar, or a pile of blades. The best sessions are not the prettiest ones, they are the ones where the pull feels like a reveal and the next drop still has a chance to top the last one.