Gold Catcher

Hi Aerospace guy, thanks for the nice offer. Sounds good and I will take you up on it the next time I am down there (perhaps already next week, I will PM you). Whatever I find we will make half/half, deal? And of course, you can try the 6000 for as long as you like. You will find it to be a true masterpiece and worth every penny. The weather up here in the Motherlode is awful so I will be a frequent visitor in SoCal over the winter. I will then also tell you were the location was. GC

Thanks, Valens L. To be honest, even without any gold it would have been rewarding. Just being out there in this majestic landscape is worth the trip 🙂 GC

Thanks, Simon. The GPX 4.5/5 with the DD coil is a definitely a good suggestion, thanks for that. Yeah I should have the 4500/5000 in my arsenal, also because of the huge coil selection. My first PI was the SDC and then later I had the choice between the 5000 and the 7000, so I chose the latter. But I of course know what and excellent performer the older GPX series has been. My hope is that more coil options will come available for the 6000 soon, but the 14DD suggestion is definitely a interesting one that I will try. I haven't used the SDC there yet, my guess is that for serious hot rock laden areas it will equally struggle. Where the SDC shines (IMO) is in mineralized shallow ground with somewhat less centralized mineralization, meaning in areas with not truly mass-centered hot rocks but rather with somewhat scattered general mineralization, like in many washes above bedrock. Thanks for commenting on my trip report. You certainly are a great inspiration in this regard and I always enjoy your awesome stories/reports/pics. Best, GC

Thanks a lot, Lunk! Great advice and Wow! that's some really nice gold you found. Now I am all fired up to go right back there. I will definitely give the 14DD a try as you suggested, thanks for that. And what a great pic with you and Jim! I totally envy you. Unfortunately, I never met him. Bill keeps telling me what a great mentor he was to him and I for sure know that he was a living legend. Best, GC

Thanks, Dave. Enjoy the rain up here...Let's get together again soon in the new year. The area I was yesterday is close to where we were the last time 🙂 Happy Holidays to you and your family! GC

Thanks, GB_A. It was not easy to get these out in that difficult terrain. Quite honestly I am worried that detecting might not be the most efficient way to recover more gold from there. I have to think about what detector or setting I will be using the next time. I am pretty certain that there is more gold there and I suspect others have tried but given up due to all the false signals.

Thanks for your comments, aerospace guy. And congrats to this beautiful nugget. Yes, there is also much bigger gold in this larger general area. One of which was the "Mojave Nugget" (156 troy oz).

I went on a little day trip to the Mojave Desert, California. It is within a day’s round trip from where I live but I had to get up at 3 am to get there on time and to have enough time available for prospecting. I decided to just have a little exploration trip and to check out this new area that I had in mind. The general area that I wanted to explore has a long history of lode and placer mining, mostly in the late 19th century, but mining was not been done on grand scale due to the extreme harsh weather conditions and lack of water. It is not too far away from Death Valley with temperatures easily reaching 115 deg F and above in summer (43 deg C) and way below freezing at night time in winter. I happen to like this harsh and unforgiving environment and spending time there is like being in a meditative state thinking to be in a foreign world, or like being on another planet. I selected a canyon area that I spotted on google earth that had a couple of old placer mines nearby. The geology is in this general region is characterized by tertiary sandstone, shale, conglomerate, breccia, and ancient lake deposits. However, there are also significant lava rock occurrences in form of highly mineralized volcanic tuff which makes detecting extremely challenging. This is a little depiction of the rocks you find there. Many of these rocks are screamers that neither the 6000 nor the 7000 were able to handle. What made the situation even more complicated is that these “hot rocks” were not just on the surface but also buried all the way deep. So, identifying targets of interest that were worth-wile digging was nearly impossible and many times I found hot rocks 1-2 feet deep that the detector picked up. I started with the 6000 and found my first little nugget very close to the surface, around 2 inch deep. What made this one interesting was that it was stuck on a volcanic tuff rock. This is another example of how gold flakes can be stuck to these rocks and wiping the dirt off of them before throwing them away can pay off. I run the 6000 on Auto/Normal/threshold on with the detector volume set all the way down to 1 but with the headset volume set to about 6 clicks. This actually worked remarkably well and made detecting a lot easier without losing sensitivity. I can highly recommend these settings and I believe Steve and JP have commented on this before. I also picked up a lot of tiny bird shots, another example of how sensitive the 6000 is. I then switched to the 7000/NF-Zsearch which I run in HY/Normal/Sens 15/semi-auto GB/smoothing off/volume 6/threshold 27. To my surprise, the detector was fairly stable under these conditions but the hot rocks still remained a major issue (no surprise). However, even when using these fairly hot settings I picked up way less bird shots than with the 6000. This was a striking example of how much more sensitive the 6000 is on tiny shallow surface targets. I managed to pick up 3 more flakes, all of which were extremely thin and flat. The nature of these flakes is suggestive of water wearing and major pounding force as part of the volcanic activity and alluvial mass flows. The only way to pick these up was by extremely slow swing speed and strict coil control which paid off in this difficult to detect area. Had I moved faster as part of ground scanning I would have missed them for sure. Overall, I was happy with my finds (albeit very modest) as I think this area has potential despite the challenging detecting conditions. I will definitely go back there for a more thorough and longer exploration. The landscape and general area are absolutely breathtaking! Many bad things can be said about California, but the nature is amazing and extremely divers, with the gold rich Sierra Nevada to the North and the vast gold bearing Mojave and Colorado deserts to the South, all of which are just within a 3-6 hour drive, depending on where you live. Here is the trash/gold ratio for the day Well, it doesn’t look too good for the “gold team”. But when does it ever? 😛 Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a safe, healthy, happy and prosperous new year! GC

I like man made lead. If I find lots of it in a gold bearing area I know gold is still in the ground. GC

The Garmin rate plans are in between $25 and $50/month. There is also a cheaper plan for $12/ month. It depends how havy you intend to use it. Re familiy account, I could send you my login and password so you can see where I go and where most of my gold finds are. But I won't. 😛

I use the Garmin Inreach Explorer+ for tracking and 2 way text messaging, so my family can always track and reach me. It does not add at all to EMI when in standby mode. Only when it transmits my location I hear it as a warble. I set it to 15 min interval, so that's a small price to pay for added peace of mind. But I also carry my Iridium Extreme Sat Phone with me. For exactly the reasons as stated above. But i leave it switched off and only use it for emergencies, like for wishing my daughter good night when I am on a mission at worlds end😀. Also, I use the GEOS global rescue insurance. Small anual fee but USD 100k coverage. Helicopter rescues can be expensive (easily > USD 30k)! Btw, they operate worldwide. I can highly recommend them. The zoleo uses the iridium network too, so from a performance perspective it should not be any different to the Garmin devices. But as Dave said, this all depends on personal preference.

Damned, I got caught....😜

Well said, Norvic. It is the small scraps at depth where the 6k is unbeatable. Bigger stuff the GPZ will hear close to equally well (IMHO). In very low EMI conditions with the 6k close to max it will find gold that others have missed, at least up to the 10 inch mark or so. However, when you need to dial back significantly due to EMI or when mounting the 14DD then the GPZ will come pretty close in performance when run hot (at least with my NF coil), also for the smaller stuff. But then it also has the added depth advantage. If the EMI is bad and you still run the 6k full bore I think you run the risk of missing gold. In those conditions the threshold can get so erratic that it will be difficult to recognize a clear target response. I am used to unstable thresholds and have a pretty high tolerance, but at some point something has to give (IMO). Overall, I remain committed to the 6k as my first to go detector. It is hard to imagine that ML would come up with something better in the future, as I believe the 6k is close to perfection. But haven't they always?🤩

Watch the long term damage though of the arm/ shoulder. By the time you pass 50 it comes at you with full force. Someone once told me that when you are past 50 and wake up one morning without pain you are dead. GC

Wow, GPZ without bungee. I am long past that time. I use my hipstick for both the 6k/11 and GPZ religiously. It's a tricky thing though: When there is too much trash I start cursing my hipstick set-up because I need to constantly get in and out of it. On the other hand, if I forgot my hipstick/bungee (or if I find out in the last second that I forgot to attach the sleeve with the hook on the shaft-ARGH) and I detect in areas without much trash, my arm get's quickly fatigued and I wish there would be more trash (or more gold!!) so I can put the detector down. 😁

LOL! I can just imagine that. That's the nice thing about hunting in the desert. If you are hot, everything around you will even be hotter, so no mind tease for cooling off, unless you are loosing it due to heat stroke and start seeing things (almost had a few of those moments....). GC

Makes a lot of sense, Simon, thanks, and thanks also for the clarification. I use the GM myself quite often for bedrock scraping, mostly with the small 5 inch coil. And yes for these applications the GM has an edge over the GPX IMO, also simply due to it's versatility for this particular application and the tiny coil size. VLF's have a solid place in my armamentum, and it could very well be that the GM has an edge even in sensitivity over the 6k/11 when it comes to get that super fast gold out of bedrock. Re GPZ, I agree with you that in mild soil with the GZP run hot (combined with your nice X-coil fleet) there is probably no need for the 6000 when performance is the only metric. Even with the NF-ZSearch -(acknowledged that you are not a fan of this coil)-I find the sensitivity to small gold being almost at the 6000 level, when run in HY/Normal/Gain 15 and up. However, the 6k is my to-go detector for a host of reasons (ergonomics, weight, sensitivity, coil options etc.) IMO it's an incredible fun machine with a performance for shallow to mid-deep gold that would only be matched by the GPZ when running really hot with either NF12 or X-coils. If depth is not intended, I would take the 6k any day. However, if you suspect deeper gold then the GPZ is the detector of choice, albeit at the expense of more weight. On a side note, I just wanted to sneak in a homage on the good old SDC (since we are talking about various detectors here). For small shallow washes with high mineralization/frequent hotrock occurrences nothing beats the SDC (IMHO) 🙂 GC

Thanks, Simon, great report and awesome pictures/clip. Looks like the X-coils are doing a really nice job for you. Unfortunately, I have yet to get more experiences with them, very few are available here (if any). Re 6000, I find that it is as sensitive or even more sensitive than the GM in the grounds that I am hunting in. Unfortunately, it is not mild at all like in your case. Please give JW my regards the next time you see him. He sent me pictures from his hunting grounds that look like out of a fairytale. What an amazing landscape you guys are having. GC

Will see you out there Steve. Don't go to my secret spots! 😁

You live in paradise, man! Crystal clear water, mild soil, gold around, what else do you need 😍

That's exactly my observation too. I don't think switching to Normal gains much for the 11" and 17". As for depth, the 11" is comparable to the 17" IMO, at least roughly. Re 14DD, In Normal the 14DD remains remarkably sensitive to fast gold in both EMI and salt cancel modes. And if it gets really bad EMI/salt wise, going back to Manual 6 will make the 6k/14DD an incredibly stable machine. I have yet to find conditions where the 6k becomes unusable. It seems that for almost all situations the 6k can be made workable by choosing the appropriate settings/coils with little overall impact on performance. I even got my Auto stable again 😁. It must have been the Gold Basin area where the Auto just would not be stable at all and Manual 7 was the only choice.

Amazing find! You have to do google translate, it is in Danish https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/midtvest/1000-aar-gammel-egyptisk-oerering-fundet-paa-jysk-mark-undrer-og

Interesting. Thus far, I have not found that Auto is significantly more stable than any manual sensitivity below 8. In fact, I mostly run in Manual 6-8 and only use Auto or Auto + in very mild conditions (EMI and ground wise). Most users that I have asked prefer to run in manual 7 (6-8) as well and find the Auto settings quite challenging to control at times. That being said, Manual around 7 provides plenty of power and provides mostly a fairly stable threshold. Sorry if I am off topic but this thread shifted more into settings so I just wanted to provide some feedback. However, during the last outing I have had people come to me and ask whether their machines were faulty because their threshold was so unstable, especially in the Auto modes. GC.

Agreed. It's like shaking the apple tree. The weak ones will fall down and give room for new ones to grow. Gold is likely to fall further as the USD is strongly advancing due to global fear. This will be a great buying opportunity at some point. In the long run Codan has only one direction: up, with ML being a significant contributor. But a bumpy ride will be ahead in the near term.

Share price valuations can be decoupled from fundamentals and often depend on market/sector forces, including artificial price manipulations. The fact that a share price drops does not necessarily mean that the underlying fundamentals are weak. Think of the stock market as a giant casino. It really isn't much more than that.