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I was feeling sickly all year, still am, but winter will be here soon, so....I put in for a week off next week to play.

I will be taking my homemade 2 inch suction nozzle dredge out for her maiden voyage in an Indiana creek.

I need to know how to anchor the dredge so the creek doesn't take it when I let go of the hose?

I will be dredging along an inside bend maybe 100 feet long x 25 feet out into the water and there are trees within 25 feet. This area was all 3-5 feet deep to visible bedrock a month ago. Now its all filled in with small gravels, no bedrock in sight.

I happen to know the area upstream is gold bearing gravels so am hopeful this will be easy to dredge with few jams and gold to boot. The water is barely ankle to knee deep now.

How long does it take for gold to settle down thru the gravels to bedrock after a flood, days, weeks, months, years?

How do I find the paystreak? I do have a waterproof Garrett AT Pro, dunno if that's a waste of time or not?

Do I just get to dredging a hole or is there a method to use? I don't want to dredge , then end up re-dredging my tailings.

Just long arm dredging here, no air. I do have a plastic pipe I could attach to the nozzle to get down 3-4 feet.

 

-Tom

 

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43 minutes ago, tvanwho said:

I need to know how to anchor the dredge so the creek doesn't take it when I let go of the hose?

How long does it take for gold to settle down thru the gravels to bedrock after a flood, days, weeks, months, years?

How do I find the paystreak? I do have a waterproof Garrett AT Pro, dunno if that's a waste of time or not?

Do I just get to dredging a hole or is there a method to use? I don't want to dredge , then end up re-dredging my tailings.

I need to know how to anchor the dredge so the creek doesn't take it when I let go of the hose? Tie ropes from the dredge to whatever natural anchors are available, like boulders or trees.

How long does it take for gold to settle down thru the gravels to bedrock after a flood, days, weeks, months, years? Gold does not settle after floods. It settles during floods, then does relatively nothing until the next flood.

How do I find the paystreak? I do have a waterproof Garrett AT Pro, dunno if that's a waste of time or not? Use your dredge to dredge sample holes. Detectors are generally a waste of time for this - gold too small and too deep.

Do I just get to dredging a hole or is there a method to use? I don't want to dredge , then end up re-dredging my tailings. If a sample hole intersects a paystreak, drop back and take another sample hole, and then another, until the end of the paystreak is located. Then dredge from there upstream taking up the paystreak.

Almost all that advice applies to larger dredges. In my opinion a 2" dredge is a gas powered crevice cleaner and best used doing just that. If I have a 2" dredge I am not going to even fire it up unless I can see bedrock with my eyes.

You may want to invest in a book, Gold Dredgers Handbook by Dave McCracken

Here I am sniping bedrock with a 2" dredge back in the 1980's...

steve-herschbach-sniping-bedrock-with-2-inch-dredge.jpg

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I also HIGHLY RECOMMEND Dave's books and DVDS...

One simple way to anchor when there are no tie offs for a smaller dredge is tie to a milk crate and fill it with rocks.

Once you have an idea of where gold should be punch a small hole, see whats in the box.  No gold move on, some gold clean the box move a little and repeat.  Keep doping so until you have ground worth your time.

ratled

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  • 2 months later...

Quite a few years ago I was present when an 8" washed away during flood.  It was tied off with ropes but the dredge was huge.  It broke the ropes and washed roughly a mile down stream.  Since then I have been paranoid so use a cable on the front end either to trees or to dead men made out of old axels.  When I tie off to trees I connect the cable to polyester straps as to not damage the trees.  I always tie one end of the back off with a rope to hold the dredge in place to manage tailings.  On the running end of the cable I use a haven grip to adjust the length of the cable.

image.png

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