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As you know from Lucky Lundy's post, I made it from Sunny Yuma to Sunny Rye Patch last week. First and foremost I want to extend my profound thanks and gratitude to Lundy for not only sharing his Rye Patch knowledge but allowing me to detect a couple of his secret spots. If you've ever hunted the Rye Patch you know there are miles and miles of unproductive ground and it has been hunted by thousands of detectors. There is no particular rhyme or reason to where the gold is found, it's a matter of putting in the hours to find a small patch. Lundy and friends have put in hundreds if not thousands of hours to find a few good spots. I think he'd sooner share his wife than his secret patches. Nevertheless, he was in a generous mood and I certainly appreciate the fellowship and opportunity to detect with a master. His friend Rudy rounded out the threesome and he is a bull of a detectorist. He doesn't know the word quit, detecting in the heat of the day with a wet t-shirt wrapped around his head, detecting after dark with a headlamp. He makes the most of his detecting time and makes me look like a first rate slacker. Detecting Rye Patch is a lot different than the desert at home in Yuma. Yuma is all about covering a lot of ground. The nuggets for the most part a few and far between, so I normally cover 3 or 4 miles a day. Rye Patch is all about finding a patch that's throwing small half gram minus nuggets, then slowing down and working the section to death from every angle. The one patch that was most productive was maybe 150 yds long and 75 yds wide. The were already bunches of dig holes but small nuggets were scattered next to old holes, in the sage brush and in one case on top of a chipmunk mound. The first 2 days I was only finding the bigger sitting duck nuggets and missing the small, deep and very faint targets. Lundy put me on a couple faint signals just to make sure I had the audio and settings correct to start finding them. The answer for me was slowing way way down, overlapping each swing by at least half if not a third of the coil length. Any threshold disturbance needed a scrape and in some cases 3 or 4 inches of scrape to bring the target up to a recognizable tone. Tricky business especially when I already thought I knew how to detect low and slow., The best settings were Sens at 15, HY, Normal. The insanely hot settings were not so good because it was producing too much noise to hear these faint threshold disturbances. I stuck it out a couple more days after Lundy left and did some exploring. Sawtooth sucked. I met one other detectorist from Idaho out there. Then Rabbit Hole where I found 2 nuggets in the old dozer pushes high up the hills. Way too much trash in there for me. I then explored another spot near Lundy's patch and found 4 more nuggets in a dozer push down in a long ravine. 6 days of temps in the high 80's and low 90's wore me down. I was only detecting 3 or 4 hrs a day and hating life trying to find shade. I Spent 1 whole afternoon in the shade trees at Rabbit Hole and thought it was heaven. I forgot my scale, but as of Lundy's photo I had 8 DWT and found another estimated 4 grams. So, I'm mid point between 1/4 oz and 1/2 oz of gold for 6 tough days. Not bad and I would certainly do it again, especially in better weather. I've got to send my Z in for replacement. Battery clip broke off and my screen is practically unreadable. Back to Sunny Yuma next week. Sitting it out in Sacto for a few days.

I finally got retired this past Friday evening. Today is my first day of retirement of what would normally be a work day. It feels really good too! I have been planning for a while to go out west to do some semi serious prospecting. I'm pretty well set on equipment (metal detectors) now but trying to narrow down where I will actually go. I am set up to go to Oregon in the Sumpter area July 8-10th and to the GPAA veterens outing on the 23-24th of July in Fernly Nv (near Reno). Right now that's the only definite things I have planned other than going to the crater of diamonds mine but will work that in when convenient. I plan to take as long as a month or so for my trip. I am thinking to stay in the NW area to prospect (Oregon, Nv, Washington State, maybe Northern California etc. But am open to any areas between NC and the NW as well. I have recently re-joined the GPAA. I would appreciate any suggestions of places I could check out to Nugget Shoot or maybe any clubs in the NW I might join to have access to some potential nugget producing areas. I hope to hit a few Gem mines as well on my trip. Terry

Hi all, Spent my last few detecting days out trying to find a new patch, hitting hard to reach spots in a known gold area. I have probably hiked and detected20+ miles with nodda, zip, zilch. I am getting discouraged, haven't gotten my ATX over gold in a while. I'm contemplating going to a completely different area like Gold Basin, though I know it's been pounded . Or should I stick my plan of finding a virgin patch. Never really found a patch, unless I had to dig up the wash to find the nuggets, too deep to beep. What do you guys do to get out of a slump? Thanks Chris

My Wife Robin and I, spent several days at Rye Patch at the end March and Beginning of April with some horrific weather that kept us busy at the casinos for two days and then fighting the wet ground noise after the snowmelt. We ended up with a 1/4 ounce of hard earned nuggets, but discussed we need to find some new spots, which I agreed. Well the weather looked great, so I loaded up my truck and headed out on 15 Apr and back home on the 18 Apr. This trip was getting back to the basics as I know them, as to finding productive ground. Sleep in the back of my Mega Cab Dodge, swings my coil for as long as I could stand it, eating cold fried chicken and a treat myself to hot coffee in the morning...I try to keep it simple...lol. I was joined by a couple of other prospecting Buddy's that stayed in town. They arrived to my spot by the time I washed down plenty of hot coffee to fight the morning chill of the high desert. We swung our coils low and slow for miles and ran into 3 small patches, that we can expand and piggy back off of for the next hunt(s)! I'm happy to be home where I can fully stretch out for a good nights sleep...getting old, for the Back to Basics hunt. But they can pay off in the long run. Below, is Joe from Colorado (Colorado Joe) SDC 2300 and my GPZ 7000 on the end of the first days hunt and then my end of trip poke, which just got over 1/4 ounce. I'm recharging for the next trip and more good times with our friends. Until the next hunt! Rick

My Northern Nevada Reno Nevada GPAA chapter holds claims in this proposed wilderness area. We need help. http://www.heller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=pershing-county-lands-bill

Hello!I plan a trip for Rye Patch at the beginning of April. It is the placer districts card round Rye Patch, somebody can recommend other places, except Rye Patch, for metal detecting? I will be very grateful for any useful information! Many thanks, Alex. Perhaps, somebody wants to join me???

I have been in Ely all week for work. I would rather be searching for some gold but that's how it goes. I drove to the Osceola district after work today. Got there at dark snow was a foot deep. I read an old post from Reno Chris about the area. Heard it is highly claimed but I'm sure there are places to prospect. Sounded like an interesting place to explore. I will be here again on my own time when the snow is not so deep to check it out. Just one more place to add to the list of must do's!

Hello! I think to go to Rye Patch at Nevada for Nuggets hunting. I would like the nobility, really interesting place and oroshy chances to find quite good gold? I have Minelab GPX 5000 and two mono coils Nugget Finder 12x7 of "and 17x13" of Evolution. I can will join somebody if you plan a trip to Rye Patch area. Or somebody can recommend what part of this area better, western or the east? I live in Yreka CA. Somebody can recommend where it is possible to try to use threw the detector for search of gold nuggets? I new at this forum also understand that my questions a little strange, but I have so far no friends who do nuggets hunting! And if, somebody can help me with this information, I am ready will share gold which I can find! Thank you in advance for any useful information!!!

I've been hitting the parks and having some fun, taking Steve's advice about loving the hunt and forgetting about target goals has actually improved my results and put more joy and patience in my game. What Im really wanting is to just get away for a few days away from all the distractions and have the opportunity to be at one with my ZED and see a flash of yellow in my scoop if I'm lucky enough, still the hunt will have to wait until the beginning of the new year and this is good giving me time for some research of ground to explore. I have a few options to satisfy my need for a little adventure, but this being the first winter I've been at this (and a wet one at that) I'm not really sure what would work best, Southern California, northern Nevada or taking the long drive to Arizona? If I can catch a week of dry weather is n. Nevada doable? or am i better off taking the drive out to Arizona although I've never hunted there and have no knowledge of the areas?

2 hours? Tertiary placer gold of the Ruby Mine, in Nevada, USA.

Up until last week I have been out prospecting five days a week. October in northern Nevada has been great but winter storms were predicted so last week was my last. It chilled off considerably in Reno the last couple days with highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s. Main development was snow in the high country and even a little on the roofs in Reno this morning. Snow in the mountains is a good thing what with the drought and all, but puts an end to my maybe going up into the Sierras on day trips. Looks like time to settle down into winter mode. When I moved to Reno I had visions of hunting here until fall, and then hunting Arizona in the winter. Reality has set in and I have found that after prospecting more or less non-stop for two thirds of the year that taking the other third off seems like a good thing. The plan now is to do a little detecting for jewelry in the parks during warmer spells of weather or maybe even a day trip prospecting now and then if it warms enough. But the week long trips are done for now. The good news is more time to work on the website/forum and do a little more writing. Anyone have any great winter plans? You guys farther south are no doubt gearing up with the cooler weather. Chris and I are looking at a trip to Arizona in February but main goal there is to visit the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show.

Back in action at the foot of the Majuba mountains, my newly updated Zed is shredding it by kicking off the winter prospecting season with a quarter ounce of heavy metal. It's going to be a great season!

I spent 3-days in Rye Patch and I was suffering with the nosiey wet soil, on day one! What a change in conditions from the week prior. So I, updated my GPZ that eve, to seek some help and I did notice a somewhat smoother machine on the following days hunt. One of my hunting partners did not update and had a great hunt, but was checking out more hot spots with his pick than I. Until the next hunt! LuckyLundy

Going to finally get a gold trip in last week of Oct, hopefully, i heard that area got some good rains recently,just wondering what you guys that have been near winnemucca think about bringing my drywasher ,is the ground still too damp. I heard they had 2 storms that dumped 1/2 of rain each one.

Paying your dues at one of America's most pounded gold bearing ground, is no joke! Thousands of acres of land to swing your coil, it's a daunting thought of where to start your hunt if you don't know the area. I put in numerous hunts with no rattle in the poke bottle. But, you start learning as you pickup a nugget or two and the puzzle pieces start to fit. My buddy Rudy and I, hit Rye Patch for a 7 day hunt, we only lasted 6 days! I don't know if it was the heat during the hunt or the beers after the hunt, but we couldn't do one more day! We both swing the GPZ, but use total different modes, you may have heard me say you can't run this machine wrong. Find what modes and setting you like and master it. We'd call each other over to listen to see if one of ours ran better than the other on whisper nugget signals. We each heard, the smallest signals we could find for each other and finally gave up the challenge of the best settings for the GPZ. The one thing in common is a very slow swing of your coil and a good pair of headphones (not the stock ones, another story). Well back to our hunt! Nuggets where biting here and there, but we couldn't land one over a penny weight, several are close. But, in our book if it's not a dwt'er its a dink nugget. Dinks are the bread and butter, but we wanted some steak & lobster nuggets. Well late afternoon on the last full day hunt, Rudy radios me to get the shovel from my truck. As I'm getting the shovel a couple of other fellow prospector's introduced theirselves to me and I lead them with me to Rudy and his deep hole. A couple of good shovel fulls of dirt and the target was out. 7.3 dwts at 16" deep on a old pounded patch...Priceless! We had a blast on our 6 day hunt and we met some new friends in the high desert search for gold. Our total Wieght was a little over 27 dwts. Did I see there is a new download for the GPZ...do I have to...lol. Until the next hunt, low and slow LuckyLundy

Everyone is invited to the free nuggetshoot on September 19th. Thousands of dollars in prizes. nugget_shoot_2015_flyer.pdf

FYI The former Oasis Bar @ Rye Patch Lake is under new ownership and back open for business! Danny Myers is the new owner, the new name is Gold Diggers. Great place for a meal after a days detecting.

I don't normally head back out to the Nevada gold fields until after labor day / Burning man is past - just because of the heat. The shady high country in California is just nicer when the weather is generally hot. However I was reading last night about bugs infesting the folks constructing the Burning man site - which is not all that far from the placer areas. Although the geology of the burning man area is different, the desert environment is the same. I just thought I'd let anyone planning on prospecting in that region that there is a bug problem and its not pretty. The bugs fly, they invade your personal space ( according to one guy, "They crawl all over you. They get up and in you"), they bite and they stink. They bite like a mosquito - only they are not searching for blood, but water. To these bugs, you are a big bag of water to be extracted through your skin. They take water from plants or wherever they can get it, and like a mosquito, they leave a welt. In all the years I've been out there, I've not seen or had problems with bugs like this, but this has been the wettest year for summer rains that I have seen in the 35 years I have lived in Nevada. Apparently, the regular waterings from the sky have created an explosion in various bug species. Although its been a couple months since I have been out that way, the weeds were growing at an amazing rate when I was last there, I guess the bugs followed. I figure I may wait a bit for the cold weather to knock them down. For those who want more info - see: http://gizmodo.com/weve-identified-those-bugs-infesting-burning-man-and-1725287661 http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/swarms-bugs-infest-site-burning-man-festival-n413136

Went out to Rye Patch this weekend and got skunked actually my brother got skunked as well but had a good time and darkened up my tan... I think I was doing something wrong ....did find alot of crystals and cleaned up all the lead out there and bullets for the next man... oh and forgot all my #s at the house along with my phone charger so needless to say I was roughing it decent...

Heading to Rye Patch for the weekend and bringing my Nokta with and just curious as to the best size coil to use...am I looking deep ...shallow or what???? I've heard things like going over with a big coil then over the same area with the smaller coil....honestly this is where inexperience green comes in...thnx

Heading to rye patch this weekend and any advice on a good place to go would be helpful and deeply appreciated.... taking my nokta on vacation

Speaking of noisy northern Nevada ground... anyone been out there in the last day or two?

Many of the prospectors here sometimes prospect in Northern Nevada, and like a number of GPZ users prospecting in northern Nevada, I have been experiencing issues in certain places with the GPZ moaning and groaning over wet ground that is a little bit salty. The amount of salt in the ground at various places in northern Nevada ranges from not salty at all to fairly salty with all ranges in between. When fully dried out this ground is no problem, but when wet it is a whole different story. Some places the salt is no issue, while in others it is very noticeable. Salt, by itself, is not conductive and dry salt will not respond to a metal detector, but when dissolved in water the salty solution is conductive. The extreme of this is wet ocean beach sand. The salty placer areas of northern Nevada are not nearly as salty as ocean beach sand but they have proven to be salty enough to cause the GPZ to have difficulty with this ground. Here in Northern Nevada we have had an unusually wet period of about the last six weeks. Much ground is now saturated wet and in places there are even puddles of standing water. Even where the surface is dried out, an inch or two below the dry surface crust the ground is fairly damp. I was camped recently in an RV park in the Pershing / Humboldt County gold areas of northern Nevada and was approached by GPZ owners also staying in the same park expressing their concerns about the GPZ ground balancing in these areas of salty wet ground. A good ground balance with a stable and quiet threshold cannot be achieved in these areas. A slow swing speed is the best way to deal with the groaning at present. Slowing way down does greatly reduce the groaning, but it does not totally eliminate it. The good news is that once this ground dries out fully, the GPZ will have no problem with the ground. The downside of this is that we have had so much rain in the last six weeks that it will likely take more than a month of dry weather before the ground dries out to the point where the salt will no longer be an issue. So I wanted to make some tests to determine what level of problem the salty ground is really causing out here in northern Nevada. A while back, Steve found a nugget patch in northern Nevada. I will not say where or exactly when that occurred, but the ground is salty and does groan quite a bit with the GPZ when its wet. In some spots on this area the wet ground really does make quite a bit of noise. Steve gridded the spot very carefully with his GPZ, and I walked around on it afterward with my GPZ and did not find any additional gold – he cleaned it very well. However, we have had a lot of rain in the last two months and I consider this an excellent spot to try out an alternative to the GPZ to see if the salty ground would cause targets to be missed. I wondered if there might be very small bits that the GPZ had missed because the groaning ground overwhelmed the target response of small targets. I figured the SDC 2300 would be a great alternative to see what, if anything, the GPZ might have left behind. So I took my SDC 2300 to the spot to see what I could find. First, I will say that even in the non-salt mode, the SDC 2300 did not have nearly the same level of difficulty with the salt. In the salt mode, the SDC was nice and quiet. I have to admit that the nice quiet threshold of the SDC was a lot more pleasant to listen to than the moaning and groaning of the GPZ. I went over the spot fairly well with the SDC and found a number of very small pieces of trash, the vast majority of which were tiny pieces of steel window screen manufactured with a wire less than a quarter of a millimeter in diameter. I did find one small nugget which weighed 0.22 g on my very accurate scale. Here is my conclusion after testing the SDC with its salt mode versus the GPZ on salty ground with comparatively shallow gold: First, Steve didn't miss much. Even though his detector moaned and groaned (and my GPZ did too), he was hearing essentially all the targets in the ground. He may have missed one very small nugget, and the window screen wire bits were very small and near or possibly below the limit of what the GPZ could hear anyway (I think on these tiniest of targets, the SDC is a bit more sensitive). My conclusion about this testing was that if you know what to listen for and listen carefully on that salty Northern Nevada ground, you are not missing much of anything with your GPZ. The ground noise may be annoying to listen to, but if you're listening carefully you're not missing much. I now have more confidence in my GPZ going over these grounds – it will be nice however when the ground dries out and the groaning goes away.

Hello All, I'm going to be visiting my mom, grandma (turning 90) and little sis in the Reno/Sparks area the end of next month and was hoping to take my ten year old nephew out detecting with me and my 5.5 yr old at least one day. Mostly time with uncle and hopefully a chance at some Nevada Gold. Cities are tough for me so i need somewhere i can get out and enjoy the beauty of the desert. Being a biologist whom has rarely traveled and studied the mountains of N.California my entire life the desert habitats are just as alluring as the gold. With my little research i learned of the Olinghouse and Peavine Districts being close. Looking at LandMatters claim maps it appears the areas are pretty much all claimed up as i'd figured. I was wondering if there is any unclaimed, not pay to mine and not gpaa areas to mine in these districts or any others close enough to be able to spend a day at without driving half the time? The historic gold produced in the Olinghouse District sure is beautiful. If there are no areas for prospecting then i'll be going to some parks with the boys. I've hunted parks and the likes in my rural area but never in a city and was wondering if my GB Pro will be overwhelmed by EMI? Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks AjR