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Detecting Around The River


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I read a lot about how challenging nugget hunting was before buying the ZED and everything I read was true. I love the challenge and the hunt, I'm finding adventures and getting outdoors for lots of exercise, loving every minute. I have so much to learn and am very thankful for the honest advice by everyone here. 

 

Hunting the desert is fairly straight foreword, but the conditions Im finding around the Rivers on the areas Ive been to so far are telling me I have no idea about what Im doing. for example, the american river area is wonderful, but in most every area around the claim i hit targets every 3 inches or so. Some areas I can find a little more clean ground, but it is almost impossible to even ground balance without several target hits every sweep of the coil. pinpointing is impossible with a 14 inch coil in these conditions and most of the ground is vertical and getting a target out of the hole only sends it over several other targets. I was down to listening only for faint targets and then searching the soil scoop by scoop for any targets I might be lucky enough to find. In several areas I am also getting a target response on solid basaltic bed rock, Im guessing this is only hot rock. Im suppose I need to be raking and clearing a small area at a time and trying to work through any trash layers if thats possible? My tendency is to want to cover a lot of ground like when Im in the desert, but that approach won't work down by the river, so I have to guess a more careful and systematic approach is necessary working only a small area?

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Fishermen leave tons a crap and fishing weights. Makes hunting these areas damn near impossible to detect.

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        and a view from the top, it is about 3 miles down to the river and the claim from this point, perhaps I should be looking here?

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Fishing weights, bullets, shells, nails ( we've talked a lot about nails, love nails) and there is a ton of old mining equipment and cables down there, vehicle frames and odd metal junk also some big fresh cat paw prints right down by the water where somebody got a cool refreshing drink.

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I don't have all day to spend down in the gulches picking through trash inch by inch. There's gold there but I'll leave those areas for 20 years in the future when we have xray detectors that can see through all that crap. I hunt higher up on the banks and hillsides, the places the gold down in the gulches shed down from. The nuggets are a lot more spotty up there but there's a lot less trash.

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I don't have all day to spend down in the gulches picking through trash inch by inch. There's gold there but I'll leave those areas for 20 years in the future when we have xray detectors that can see through all that crap. I hunt higher up on the banks and hillsides, the places the gold down in the gulches shed down from. The nuggets are a lot more spotty up there but there's a lot less trash.

 

Ahhh, the gold goggles... now I understand. No, really a little higher up seems like a better idea although thats been pretty tough to get to where I've been so far. everything is very vertical and the brush, trees and poison oak is heavy. I think I need to explore other areas for property more suited to detecting. I just didn't want to write off these spots without knowing what Im doing wrong and miss good ground out of ignorance.

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Sounds like at that spot u would do better with a vlf and a small coil. Until maybe theyll make a small coil for 7000. Atleast on a vlf with display you can pass up iron id signals and dig all nonferrous signals. Not going to cure the lead problem. But atleast a small coil you would get less targets at once under the coil. Not sure if you have any high bench deposits there. Might be good to look higher up the hill. Sometimes even 1/2 mile up the hill could be old channel. Might be a quieter detecting experience.

Good luck.

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Rivers are tricky. You have to know the areas well because you need to recognise the different levels to which the water rises and falls over the years. But most important of all, you need to know that the river actually has gold in it in the first place. As far as where to search, you basically have two options.

 

One is to target very specific parts of the river, as if you were sniping with a drysuit on. Target bedrock areas where the flow of the river drops significantly (sharp inside bends, gravel banks), or obstructions in the river that could trap gold (fallen trees, large boulders) and see if you can detect anything there. But since lead shot has a similar mass to gold you might find trash like fishing weights in those places where you'd also expect gold to have lodged. It goes without saying that you need a waterproof metal detector here and a good pair of waders.

 

The other is to detect in the flood plain areas. The areas of the river where the water flows during a flood. These are the times when the heavier gold gets moved and may be left in terraces high above the present level of the water or in areas away from the main course. You need to look for large, smooth rocks and boulders deposited by the river when the floods force the water to break outside it's regular course. Detecting these areas is drier and safer, but you may need to shift some of the bigger rocks to allow the detector to search deep enough.

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rumblefish, good points. 

We used to  watch the rivers during the spring flooding or during big storm runoff,

something that doesn't happen much these days I know,

and watch how the river behaved when the high water was moving lots of material.

I have actually seen boulders as big as VW's being rolled around like so many bowling balls

and sparking under the water.

A river at flood stage shows you a lot about where you might want to hunt after the water goes down.

 

Definitely different than hunting deserts.

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