Junk Found In Eastern San Diego, No Gold :(

[ErikPeterFarr]

This is my first post and I'm still relatively new to detecting. Wondering if the size of my nonferrous pieces is indicative that I would miss gold. This was from about 6 hours with a Fisher F19 that I got on sale. The California ground is annoying in that it needs balancing every few steps. Anything above gain 60/100 and >0 threshold would be way too chirpy, I think that indicates decently hot ground. Got a really good feel for negative rocks, though the tones with Iron sound an awful lot like everything else. Discriminate mode blocked a lot of the chatter but it made me worry some about missing targets.

Note that I did pan good areas nearby and take samples, none of which had even the tiniest speck so I doubt I actually missed any. I'll need to take longer trips either north or east where the better claims are.

[1515Art]

When you are first learning your detector everything you dig is a lesson the more you dig the better you’ll understand the things it is telling you. Are you looking in and area known for finding gold nuggets? I’m guessing you covered a fairly large area where you were detecting too if you got all that big stuff from a small Spot it would be challenging but not impossible. Cleaning out the trash in a known gold location allows you to hear the faint signals and properly setting your detector for the ground conditions you need to really slow down and carefully listening for the  faint tones most gold you’ll find is going to be small.  You will find a wealth of information on these topics on YouTube by a host of really experienced prospectors, look for Jeff Williams, Chris Ralph, two toes, USMinor they take the time to share their knowledge you can answer a lot of your questions Watching the videos they produce. 

If you haven’t, join a prospecting club that holds claims in an area you want to hunt being in the right location is key, but expect the areas you hunt have been hunted before you are looking for gold missed by others. The photo attached is the typical junk I’m finding looking for gold nuggets, not to say you should not dig what you did as any one of those could have been a nugget just a matter of odds most of the gold is smaller.

[Hard Prospector]

These days its actually easier to find a gold ring at the beach than a (missed)  nugget in the gold fields. I say this because you already live in San Diego county with over 50 miles of beach. If your going to look for gold  in the back country or local desert, bring a drywasher along. Most of the gold in these areas was fine and the word "nugget" implying heft was considered rare for SD county according to  historical records.

However,  I do know of a guy who found a 1.5 gram piece digging under a boulder near Julian so you never know.

[Steve Herschbach]

Unfortunately if looking for gold nuggets you dig way, way more trash than gold. Many large ferrous items read good on even the best discriminating detectors, let alone prospecting detectors. And many prospectors say dig it all anyway! 

This photo from some testing I did shows various hot rocks and trash I've dug while nugget hunting, which I then use to test detectors. The truth is you can cherry pick somewhat with VLF detectors but it always comes at the cost of reduced depth and possible misidentified and therefore missed gold.

The main secret to solving this is research and doing you best to put yourself places where the odds of gold are better than the odds of trash. Sadly, the cleaner areas get hit the most as people avoid trashy sites, so some of the best gold still waiting to be found is in those very trashy locations people have been avoiding. Basically you need a strong back and a lot of patience to play this game.

The main advice I would offer is you need to be digging tiny stuff. If all you are digging is big stuff all you are going to dig is junk. If you are finding buckshot and pellets your skills are well developed. If not, you need more work at it. Typical small stuff I dig while looking for nuggets....

[Jeff McClendon]

Hopefully your F19 has the 10x5” elliptical coil. As others have said being in a gold producing area is step one. Cleaning up big ferrous and non ferrous targets is a good idea too. Learning what a tiny or faint  target sounds like and tuning your ears to that sound helps too. Try Steve’s Bic Pen test and also practice on some really small pieces of lead or aluminum like 1/4” to 1/8” size. Running your F19 at 60 to 80 gain is perfectly fine. If you detect a really big target it is a good idea to ground balance again after recovering it or moving on. My plate full of recent targets looks a lot like 1515Art’s. Most were nonferrous targets along with a few pieces of wire and rusty tin can shards. One tiny but really cute piece of gold in the middle. Used the XP ORX but the F19 would have hit these targets too. 

[Wendell Clark]

Join the SPMA, lots of claims from S.D. county to Yuma Az. If you also relic hunt I would like recomennd a book by Chris Wray called The Historic Backcountry. It covers SD and Imperial counties. Loads of information.