For the past five years, Colt Busch has been searching for sunken treasures through his skill as a magnet fisherman and on Oct. 13, he landed a historical object in Windham that amazed even the greatest of skeptics.
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| Magnet fisherman Colt Busch and his friends found a perfectly preserved Coca Cola glass bottle made in Portland in 1915 in the Presumpscot River near the old South Windham Fire Station on Oct. 13. SUBMITTED PHOTO |
Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be an intact Coca Cola bottle manufactured in Portland in 1915, making it well over 100 years old.
“When I determined what it was, it kind of gave me the chills,” Busch said. “It’s always interesting to find historical items. The more historical they are, all the better.”
He has been magnet fishing as a hobby for the past five years after watching a video about how to do it. Magnet fishing involves the use of large and powerful magnets cast from the shore and then dragged across the bottom of a river or other body of water to attract and pull up any items that might be down there.
Working in maintenance for McDonalds, Busch said he tries to get outside to pursue his hobby whenever he can.
To date, he’s hauled up more than 140 bicycles from local rivers and an assortment of other items including scooters, grocery carts, keys, and even a wheelchair. Several years ago, Busch found an antique gun in a river in Westbrook which was also more than a century old. That’s now displayed at the Westbrook Museum.
Taking metal out of the river helps improve the environment, Busch said. And much of the metal he retrieves while magnet fishing ends up being recycled.
The basic equipment for magnet fishing includes grappling hooks to snag objects that are coming out of the water and powerful magnets, sometimes weighing more than several hundred pounds.
Safety is also a priority for Busch when he’s magnet fishing. He wears durable protective gloves when handling the magnets and makes sure his footing on the shoreline is firm.
“You just never know what you are going to find when you set out to do this,” Busch said. “Through the years I’ve found an old safe, old padlocks and one time I found an old picnic table.”
Finding this antique Coke bottle in Windham though was really a special moment for him.
“To still be intact after all these years is incredible,” Busch said. “To imagine it staying all this time in one spot with the river current rushing past decade after decade is mind-boggling and to not have the glass broken is unthinkable.”
When he first brought the bottle home after finding it, his wife and two daughters thought that it was an awesome feat, but his wife suggested that Busch needed to find a permanent home elsewhere for it.
“She really doesn’t like piling up a lot of junk around our house,” he said.
Because the Coke bottle was underwater for over a century, it’s kind of fragile and people he spoke with about it suggested keeping it in water to help preserve it.
“We took it to Mr. Drew and His Animals Too in Lewiston, and he agreed to keep it in water and display it there for us,” Busch said. “Lots of people will be able to see it on display there.”
Choosing the Presumpscot River site in Windham was the idea of Busch’s friends from Canada who were magnet fishing with him that day.
“They wanted to check out that particular spot and I’m sure glad they did,” he said.
With so many bodies of water in the Lakes Region, Busch thinks he’ll never run out of spots to search while magnet fishing.
“There are so many ponds, and lakes in Raymond that I’ve never even been to,” he said. “When you do magnet fishing there is so much to explore. There are countless lakes, creeks, rivers, streams and the ocean which are all very close to us. I don’t think I will run out of places to go anytime soon.” <
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