Some Ca Gold With The Minelab SDC

[Calmark]

Hello everyone,

I though I'd share a little about my success with the Minelab SDC last week.  While I've lived in Butte county, CA a couple of decades, I generally prospect in Nevada county, as that's the area I'm most familiar with. This past trip to was to a small creek that has hydraulic pits above it and extensive bench workings just above the water.  I used to dredge in this creek until it was shut down to dredging with the ban.  I've tried various White's detectors here in the past with no success, since its very mineralized and I couldn't tell the difference between faint real signals and all of the false signals I'd get with the detector.  

I bought the SDC last February, (just before the GPZ came out, of course!) and my first trip there I did manage to find my first detected gold ever with a sub .1 gram nugget and one about .2g.  I really enjoyed how stable the SDC was and was able to hear the whisper signals that told me where the gold was hiding in bedrock.  Last week's trip, I decided to go for potentially larger nuggets and detected the bench cobble piles for 3-4 hours, but only found the usual nails and iron trash, along with a few lead bullets.  Thinking I needed to hit shallow bedrock along the water if I didn't want to go home skunked, I did just that.  After 30-40 minutes I got a decent signal on a high spot on the bedrock.  Laced with tiny cracks, I thought it was a good sign the signal could be gold.  Sure enough, I got the signal into my scoop after chipping the bedrock and ended up with a nice water-worn nugget weighing .25g, my biggest yet!  I had avoided the skunk, so that was a great way to enter into the late afternoon.

After no more finds, I headed upstream in the direction of the car and worked another area.  After digging a few junk targets, I got a nice signal that was stronger than the last nugget.  It was where a small crack had formed to the rear of a little bedrock ridge that would be in the water during the winter.  I had a good feeling about that signal and a whack or two with my pick broke off the bedrock.  Once I cleaned the spot, the signal was in the scoop.  And sure enough, it was an even larger nugget!  It was the same size, shape and thickness of a 1/2 a sunflower seed and I could see how it would have fit perfectly in that tiny crack.  It weighed .65 grams, so that made two nuggets on the day for nearly a gram.  I'd generally find more in a day of dredging, but overall, not bad at all I thought for only my second time out with the SDC.  

As it turned out, that was it for the day, as I only had about 1/2 hour until it was nearing dark and my batteries ran out.  I figured I got about 5.5 hours of use from the rechargable batteries, and definitely need another set for those full days out detecting in the future.  I definitely feel like the SDC really helped me hear the signals I did in this nasty area other detectors I've tried weren't able to handle.  Now, I didn't enjoy digging all of those square nails, but if this PI machine lets me concentrate on signals that are real, then I'm more than happy to dig some trash in the quest for those nuggets.  

Here are some pictures of the larger nugget just dug and the two of them together:

 

[beatup]

WTG,nice gold.

[1515Art]

very nice

[Featherdfishead]

Glad you found your biggest peace yet -  Calmark. The SDC sure sniffs out the gold and is a breeze to run.

 

May you find many more nuggets with your trusty SDC!

AjR

[Rick Watkins]

Nice pieces, can i ask where you were you running the sdc at on bedrock Calmark?

[Calmark]

Featheredfishhead,  I hope to keep breaking my record for nugget size with the SDC.  I've found much larger stuff in the water in the past, so I know its out there.  I hope I can find an area like yours that hasn't seen much prospecting action sometime too.

 

I was out in an area not too far outside of Nevada City, CA up around the town of Washington to give you an idea, Rick.  There are tons of old hydraulic pits in that general area.  So many, a guy couldn't even hope to cover them all in a lifetime.  But, I'm thinking I'd like to find some more remote areas off the beaten path now that I have confidence in the SDC finding the gold.   

[mn90403]

You are describing the river almost exactly the same way as the Yuba in Downieville.  I was able to get my 18.3 g nugget on a soft spot, near the water line on the bedrock.  It was my first river gold with a metal detector.

[Calmark]

Yep, this area is like the Yuba River near Downieville, but on a smaller scale.  That's good, except the few most obvious areas along the creek for holding gold have mostly been looked over.  I think my best chances for big gold lie up the hillsides where its very steep and rugged with lots of obstacles like brush and leaf litter.  Either that, or just keep plugging away in the trashy areas where something has to have been missed.  But, I'll definitely try the areas near the water when the going gets tough to try to squeak out a few finds.  

 

Nice nugget you found by the way, mn90403!  That one was a whopper and a really pretty piece.