The world’s waterways are a great place to hide stuff quickly. You may not easily be able to find it again, so you have to be careful about what you toss in, and that’s obviously not taking any environmental concerns into account. Still, if you’ve just committed a crime like grand theft motorbike, your nearest canal is a great place to ditch the thing.  

We’re not suggesting you do that, of course, but plenty of people have and probably will continue to do so. From knives to guns and other weapons, both the true crime and fiction genres contain multiple instances of criminals ditching their recently-used cache in any convenient waterway for the same reason. What happens when someone finds it, though? 

That’s where a video like this comes in. It’s a supercut of YouTuber Drasticg’s magnet fishing expeditions that resulted in hauling stolen motorbikes out of the UK’s canals. Whenever the guy and his buddies found one and hauled it up, they’d check to see if it was registered as stolen. If it was, they rang the non-emergency line for whatever policing area they were in, and told them about the stolen bike they’d just hauled out of the drink.  

As you’ve no doubt seen even if you don’t live in the UK, motorcycle theft has been a major problem for years. Many times, it seems that the thieves don’t even want the bikes to keep for themselves, necessarily. Instead, they just want them to go do additional mischief while riding, and will then abandon them later by, say, dumping them in the nearest canal.  

What kinds of bikes did Drasticg and his friends pull out of the water? From little scooters to 125s to CBRs, a wide range of bikes came up in this video. Some were little more than rusted-out frames and rotted tires barely clinging to wheels, while others were relatively intact big bikes that required two or more people to properly rescue due to their weight.  

There are a bunch of magnet fishers on YouTube who aren’t just in the UK, and some of them find bikes as well. If this kind of thing interests you enough to want to try it, definitely bring a friend or two in case you find something. Wear gloves, check if your phone signal in the area is good so you can call anyone you need to, and bring some wading boots, because you’re gonna get wet and muddy.  

Source: YouTube 

Top comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?
Comment!
Got a tip for us? Email: tips@rideapart.com