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Beach Hunting: Choosing Your Beaches Wisely


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I am a novice metal detectorist armed with a Nokta Makro Legend, a garrett carrot, sand scoop, and boots. Went to a number of beaches and found them lacking in signals, but also found beaches loaded with signals. The ones that were especially bad, were ones where you had to pay to get in, or were not popular (aka not near a city). Also beaches that are completely washed out of sand, lacked the infrastructure to hold good targets unless you waited till low tide; to which you might have more room to work with.
The best beaches I've found are the free ones; with people actually getting into the water (or at the very least getting their feet wet) with a decent amount of visitors. The best targets were the ones found at low tide; which just happened to be at the end of the day so working quickly is a must. One beach provided a ton of targets along with solid finds of some small pieces of gold and silver. Compared to other beaches I've explored in the past week, it was just loaded with targets which increased chances of finding something cool.
 I was wondering if anybody had more to add to this? It would great to learn more about detecting techniques on the beach/ knowing the kinds of beaches that should be explored if you're looking to find a ton of targets. 

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My beach hunting instincts:

1. More people, more jewelry drops. Also means more detectorists already hitting the place.

2. Drop jewelry in waist deep water, very hard to find. Drop in the sand, you may be able to find it. (this assumes you knew you dropped it in both cases)

3. More detectorists hit the dry and wet sand than hunt in the water. Less competition in the water.

4. Best time to go hunting is an early morning low tide. Work the water line first before the tide covers it back up. Save the water hunting for later when the beach gets crowded. Work the towel line before it gets crowded if the water line has no targets.

5. Go hunting after a storm stirs up the beach. Water targets could then be easier wet sand targets after getting pushed in or uncovered.

6. If the popular busy beach is cleaned out of targets, try a not so busy beach. In my area you have wall to wall condos lining the beach for miles, which house a lot of vacation renters hitting the beach right behind their condo. It may not have as many people as a public parking beach, but it doesn't have as many detectorists either.

I probably have more thoughts, but those are the main ones that popped into my head at 5 a.m. this morning about beach hunting.

Good luck, it sounds like you are on the right track. Learn your detector and learn your beaches. You will hit the gold if you put the time in.

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I also found two rings right next to each other kinda in the same area. Though one was fake, the other one was heavier and might be silver. Like objects seem to show up in the same places.

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33 minutes ago, Sirius said:

I also found two rings right next to each other kinda in the same area. Though one was fake, the other one was heavier and might be silver. Like objects seem to show up in the same places.

Possibly they were laying in a pile on the same towel when the owner forgot and picked up the towel.

Also, if you hit the beach during a low tide later in the day, go as deep as you comfortably can in the water during that low. When you're deep at low tide, that is the least hunted area by others due to it's inaccessibility at the other higher tides.

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I can certainly try, it would also seem like the wet is going to be the place where most of the treasure will be found as the tides push in material( including treasures), and then retreats leaving them buried in the wet. At least that's what I could gather from Merrills guide to metal detecting beaches. I also have to consider going as the tide is going down; to which websites like https://tides.willyweather.com/ help determine when low and high tide would occur.

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Hunting during a storm is pretty risky and I personally wouldn't want to get soaked. But the hunting from high tide down to low tide is a pretty solid plan especially if high tide is early morning. Plenty of time to hunt, and it's something i'm planning to do this sunday!
Would you also suggest picking a few beaches you know would produce to narrow your search down? Seems like a few of these beaches just keep on giving time after time even with other detectorists around! So It might be cool to keep searching the same areas for new goodies that might have washed up.

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27 minutes ago, Sirius said:

Hunting during a storm is pretty risky and I personally wouldn't want to get soaked. But the hunting from high tide down to low tide is a pretty solid plan especially if high tide is early morning. Plenty of time to hunt, and it's something i'm planning to do this sunday!
Would you also suggest picking a few beaches you know would produce to narrow your search down? Seems like a few of these beaches just keep on giving time after time even with other detectorists around! So It might be cool to keep searching the same areas for new goodies that might have washed up.

Those are all great suggestions. I always have 2 or 3 beaches as backups if my 1st choice doesn't produce. You only want to hunt what is comfortable for you. Me personally , I was born a surf rat. Always in or around water. High risk = high reward. I typically wear shorts , a rain jacket , 3 finds bags , often barefoot. Others wear wetsuits or other rain gear, etc. Low tides are not always the best but allow you to cover more ground. Often they are loaded with lightweight trash like bottlecaps and light foil. All depends. Troughs , sandbars,  rocks , sand texture and compaction all play a factor.

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I've seen people wear waders if they wanted to be half in the surf. I probably can't go too deep because i've got into the surf before and got my glasses knocked off. Better to stay in the wet and run in when the tide recedes to do a quick scan. Also wearing a hat is probably important cause sunburns and all that good stuff.
The Legend has a bottle cap reject feature and seems to work pretty well. The most I find are going to be targets like can slaw, and for some reason a ton of copper wiring. 

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9 minutes ago, Sirius said:

I've seen people wear waders if they wanted to be half in the surf. I probably can't go too deep because i've got into the surf before and got my glasses knocked off. Better to stay in the wet and run in when the tide recedes to do a quick scan. Also wearing a hat is probably important cause sunburns and all that good stuff.
The Legend has a bottle cap reject feature and seems to work pretty well. The most I find are going to be targets like can slaw, and for some reason a ton of copper wiring. 

I seldom wade in the water anymore. If your not finding good targets within 20-30 minutes , pick up the pace , move to a more promising spot down the beach. Or go to a different beach. By good targets I mean clad , junk jewelry and mainly fishing weights. When you find all 3 , slow down. Gold is nearby .

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