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Had a good day out with the GPZ 7000. First target of the day was a hot rock 8 inches deep in cemented gravels. Next target was over a foot into the cemented gravels, but this time it was the kind of hot rock I like...the heavy, yellow kind. A half ounce day in the Arizona desert can be hard to come by these days, but it’s still out there.

I discovered a week or so ago that the American one dime is 7½% smaller than the Australian five cents I normally use, so I bought one on ebay. I think a couple of bucks is a small price to pay to get bigger gold. Here is some pieces I got on my last outings. They`re way bigger now.

Great day out yesterday with my mate Bazza , sun was shinning bull ants where biting and them march flies where the size of small planes lol. Hit a new spot just out of Cressy and worked an area no bigger that 15 meters x 15 meters and came up with 14 little bits and some nice little bits in quartz. GPZ SDC combo with a lot of raking shoulders a little sore this morning. Still having trouble running in normal, seem to be digging a lot of ghost targets around them trees but i just can't walk away. (any advice would be great) Hope everybody is getting yellow. Regards Rockett.

Well i am headed back north to Wyoming this Tuesday so my time in the desert is done for this year ,did not find any thing big but had a great time down here detecting with my brother and all the rest of our friends here you know who you are,Thanks for the memories and good times. Here are our desert finds

I haven't been out detecting in over a year and probably twice in the past three years. Last time out was with a new to me SDC2300 with my 9 year old. He thought it was too heavy so I got him a Gold Monster. Now he is 10 years old and we finally got out today for a couple hours between soccer and basketball games. Being an avid prospector and mainly an electronic prospector for many many years, I dropped all prospecting to spend time with my kids. It almost feels like I don't remember how to do it anymore? But like riding a bike, it all came back as soon as we arrived at our hunting grounds. What settings to use? Having only read Steve H's thread on the Gold Monster I figured we were good to go. I was right. Six targets and four of them yellow in a two hour hunt. Nothing big, but that doesn't matter. We had a great time. First target with the new detector was gold! Nice way to break it in. We hunted in discrimination mode and figured out this machine pretty quick. Targets that repeat back and forth were the answer. The size of the target versus the signal response are amazing. I trained Slater for the first two targets on how to recover targets and now I feel we can go out and he can do this on his own. Digging all targets is always the way to go, but to go out and use a machine that only sounds off on non-ferrous targets was great for a 10 year old. What a great, easy detector! And it finds tiny gold! We took a bunch of pictures but I am only going to post the picture of the little gold nuggets on the coil when we got home. No smiling face, but I can assure you he had a BIG smile! I think my smile was bigger though...

Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's my own personal record that I broke. Not sure what it weighs, I didn't even try.

Last Thursday February 8, 2018 got into the field. I'm calling the first one a "nerdle" because when I detected it I really did not know what I had until I got it home and cleaned it up. It set off the Zed, but I had a hard time seeing any gold. The only thing I knew when I left the field for the day was that it was something natural as opposed to man-made, and it was not ferrous. After getting it home and putting it in an acid bath, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the ZED was much smarter than I, and unbelievably sensitive. About an hour later and a whole lot of walking I came upon this little tributary running off of a ridge, the dirt was very red, lots of decomposed quartz and granite, and I snagged this little piece. Any detector should have been able to find this one. It was only about 4 inches down, right in the middle of the gully on the downhill side of a bush. Doc, Doc's Detecting Supply Authorized Minelab Dealer Minelab Certified Gold Machine Trainer

Just saw this over on Rob’s forum: http://forums.robsdetectors.com/topic/12451-the-best-day-ever-minelab-gpz-7000/ Congrats Rob!

Spent half a day last Saturday detecting at Quartzsite and found a couple little beauties.

Sorry I have not been in the loop the last week, as I was down South. Thanks for the invite from my clients and friends. We had a fabulous time down there in Yuma and digging up the gold. No monster stories to tell, at least not about the gold nuggets, but I was able to dust off my GPZ-7000 and find my 1st piece of 2018. What a great way to kick start my year. Just a little one at .4 gram...but sometimes the hunt and the folks in the hunt are even better. I hope I get the invite again and looking forward to seeing all my clients and friends who winter down there or anywhere if you invite me. I might even do a little training for you too.

I happened upon this toad today. Just under 2 Oz. 59.8 grams!

My brother just shared me a few photos of his 1st GPX-5000 nugget for 2018 and it is a dandy at 17.5 grams It was deep too and no other detectors found it. How is this for depth??? A Sun Baker with part of it exposed. There is even a little plant flower with 1 leaf that was growing in the mud of a crevice in the nugget. I can't wait to see the video. Yes there are still a few nuggets out there near the surface. What is the biggest gold you have ever found on the surface? I'd love to see and hear about them.

My prospecting partner from San Diego and I made a quick trip down to Baja for some prospecting. The area is an old placer site about 190 miles south of the border. He's been detecting the area for over 20 years, from Gold Bug through Minelab 2200 and now with the GPZ. All the patches have been hit pretty hard but we managed to scrape up a few nice pieces. We had 3 good days of detecting, I spent one day on the old patches and the rest of the time exploring for new spots. My nugget total was half of his since he opted to stay on the old patches. We drove as far as we could up an old wash then traveled another 2 to 3 miles by motorbike, then hiked another mile or so up some steep canyons. He uses a Yamaha Big Wheel trail bike, I used my newest prospecting steed the Rokon 2 wheel drive mototractor. The Rokon is a terrain traveling son of a gun, if you can hang on. I managed to dump it a couple times, invariably in bowling ball sized rocks or on steep boulder strewn hills. I'm still nursing a bruised ankle after that 200 lb machine came down on top of me pinning my leg and ankle underneath. It's definitely not for the faint of heart or those that are 2 wheel vehicle balance challenged (like me). All my falls occurred from momentary indecision and hesitation. The solution seems to be pick a line, then hit the gas or stay at home. My nuggets all came from a single wash where recent rains had blown out some of the overburden leaving bedrock within detector depth. My partner pulled almost an oz swinging low and slow over the old hillside placer diggings. This was really our tune up trip, preparing for an extended trip another 300 miles south after Christmas.

Was out today and found my smallest piece of gold to date with my 7000 today, the little bugger came in at .03 of a gram

Just kidding As detecting goes, 2017 was not kind to me. Probably the worst year I`ve had since I moved to the gold fields. My best year was the first year I bought the GPX5000. I put in a pretty big effort last year with the 19" coil for very little result but I intend to use it a fair bit again this year. I don`t do this for the money and I would really like to find a big deep bit. Any way here is some of the gold I found in 2017. I hope we all find more gold in 2018 cheers Dave

This morning i woke up at the usual time of 5am and got my gear together , this time i used my Explorer 11 and the Pro coil . I got to the beach at around 7am and it was still dark . I looked at the usual beaches and saw that the beaches had started to build up , i was working for the last few days and i have heard that it wasn't bad during that time because of bad weather . But now it was looking poor . So i walked to a few beaches further along and found that the beaches were looking good . Normally i wouldn't search here due to my normal beaches being very productive . So i got started and i started to find coinage in small pockets or scuffed out areas next to groins . I was thinking it would be really nice to find a ring along here as i have only found 1 Gold ring this far along and that was in 2014 for a person who had lost it and asked me to look for it . I found that with my Terra 705 in less that 5 minutes after it had been lost for most of the day and gone through a hide tide. I found that as i was going along that coinage was being found in a long line and then i came up against a target that read on my Explorer 11 ??? (on the ET it reads 12 21) and i dug it thinking 20p piece . By the time i had scooped out 6 inches of sand and shingle from the hole i saw a ring . I had my magnifying glass with me so checked it out and i saw 916 which i know to be 22k . That got me all fired up but i couldn't find any more rings . I did find more coinage and by the end at around 12 midday i had £30.80p and a decimal old Half Penny and the what i now know to be 6.2 g 22 k Gold ring .In amongst the coinage is a lot of the older Pound coins which are not legal tender but can be taken to the bank and paid into an account. I will be out again but not sure when , tides are short and i might have a lack of time till next week.

Found on the 23rd December 16 inches down next to the old iron bark tree. Found by my gold partner Bazza with our GPZ 7000. Hi to the boys at the Dunolly Caravan Park. LOLA gives her love. Happy new year to all and happy hunting there still out there. Thanks Nanxxx

My last trip of 2017 took me to a small prospect I had never visited before and so as an exploration trip more time was spent scoping out the area than actually detecting. Still, I surprised myself by banging this little 3.1 gram specimen almost immediately with the Gold Monster. I did not know it at the time of course but it was my last gold for 2017. I will get back to the area in 2018 now that I know how to get there!

Come on people! Where are your Christmas nuggets? If you can believe it, this one is under an ounce. I call it a potato chip. Very flat.

We were out a couple of days ago and detected these nuggets with the GM 1000. Temperatures were right at 32 degrees and the ground was wet and slightly frozen in a few places. One of the guys got a 6 gram nugget. My Gold Bug 2 is in for repair, so I was using the Gold Monster. It is more sensitive than the GB 2, but certainly more difficult to handle. The signals are not as friendly and the chirps on every blade of grass is annoying. But you can get gold with the Monster.

I had a couple of productive days in a new area me and my buddy Dave have been checking out. First was last Sunday, I found a wash that gave up 8 nuggets, 6 for me and 2 for Dave, then I found a few small pieces in a couple of nearby tributaries. Ended up with about 8.8 grams. Then today we tried an area nearby, and I guess I got the lucky wash. I was able to dig up 11grams, biggest was 4.9. Two nuggets came out of the same hole. Dave and I hiked a lot and dug a bunch of bullets. Deep ones on bedrock, a bunch of heartbreak digs. Worn out we called it a day. It was a beautiful day to be out prospecting. Chris

Dave and I went out last Sunday and had some success. First I heard a slight but repeatable whisper in the center of a flat wash. Dug down about 20 inches and got an attractive 3 gram nugget. I really am amazed I found a nugget that small, that deep Next I headed to the other side of little valley and hit a wash (tiny drainage) I wasn't expecting much but came across these 2 nice specie. They cleaned up pretty nice. Very spongy gold, again impressed with the 7000. Dave found a nice 2 gram sunbaker!! Chris

It's been very hard to believe in my detector and I really got discourage at times finding nothing but junk on every target. Finally after a week of detecting every day for 3 or 4 hours or more I found something. It's not much but I no it works now. My GM 1000 will not be paid off any time soon at this rate but it sure beats sitting on my butt everyday waiting for the seasons to change.

A good prospecting colleague posted this elsewhere, Where some very rare welsh Gold sold for a very high price breaking the record of past sales, John. http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/prince-harry-gold-nuggets-auction-13968136

Had a few days to detect out at Rye Patch, Nevada before the 3-day detector training class put on by Gerry’s Detectors. The weather was perfect - sunny and low 70’s. I was keen to see how the new update would handle the alkali-rich soil in conjunction with the GPZ-19 coil. Although the ground was dry, there was still a fair bit of moaning and groaning ground response with the large coil, but Locate Patch smoothed it out quite well, and favoring a faster swing speed allowed for increased ground coverage. After 20 minutes or so of operating in the Auto Ground Balance mode to allow the detector to get a good ferrite balance to the local soil, I switched over to Semi-Auto, as there didn’t seem to be much ferrite present. I was impressed with the depth and sensitivity to the small nuggets I was finding, the deepest at 14 inches gave a reasonable signal response from the get-go. All up 9 grams between 20 nuggets. The two thin bits in the lower left were found with a quick detect using the Gold Monster 1000 on an old patch.