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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.

Here in rural Pennsylvania if you trout fish you fish one of two ways. You either wait for the trout stocking truck to arrive and fish or you hike into the wilderness to find the native trout that no one else fishes for. Everyone follows the stocking truck, very few hike into the wilderness. I have discovered that metal detecting is very similar. If you dirt hunt you either hunt in public parks or public lands or hunt on permissions. Public lands require the newest and best equipment. Permissions require skill and knowledge of the equipment that you own. On the beach you either wait for the stocking truck or summer tourist to arrive or you hunt on beaches that are sort of like permission hunts. On tourist beach you are competing with anyone who walks on the beach with a detector. On the South Carolina islands beaches of Daufuski, kaiwah, Tybee, Fripp Island, Isle of Palms...etc, you have to rent a property on the beach to be able to metal detect. This makes it a permission. You can not just drive to the beach and detect, you have to pay to play, but this payment usually gives you exclusive detecting of the island since no one else does this. No one can just drive to Daufuski Island and hunt for the day and drive home. It doesn't work. You have to rent if you want to hunt Daufuski. VRBO is your permission on exclusive islands. I find it amazing that the youtube hunters on Atlantic public beaches have no content to post currently. The stocking truck of summer has run it's course. But I can go to a permission beach and find gold any week of the winter. Permission beaches never run out of finds. Metal detecting requires many skills. Research, equipment and knowledge can give you a huge advantage. Happy hunting and I hope this post helps you to become a better hunter.

So, my beach season officially starts again. My first hunt after Labor Day and I couldn’t wait to get out there. A friend text me pictures of silver he just found, and I think I surprised him by walking out on the beach to see them. 😄 He thought I was 2 hours away and didn't know I was going detecting that day. Because he found silver rather shallow at 6-8”, I decided to take the Equinox out and see how midalake’s settings worked out. It took a while to get used to it and I did get a couple nonferrous that read negative numbers, but none were quality targets. I ended up changing the recovery speed to 4 which is what I am used to. Thanks midalake for posting those settings. So, how did the Equinox do??? Well, the Equinox did not exactly hit gold, but it did get me close enough to glance to my left while digging another target and spot a gold hoop earring sitting right on top of the sand. 😍There was some pushing up of targets from the ocean recently and that was exposed. Along with that, I found a silver quarter and a sterling religious medal. A decent amount of clad as well and a greatly reduced amount of junk targets. Not too shabby for 3 ½ hours. I then switched to the GPX and dug my heart out. A lot more clad, more junk, but also a Buffalo nickel and another silver quarter. All in all, it was nice to get back to digging at the beach!

The storms are a few days behind us but there are a few good waves coming in to make some patches. I found one patch today on one of my 'go to' local beaches and got a couple of golds! One has some stones (10k/2g/diamonds) to go with it. The other is a 14k gold earring that is not so rare this year. It is my 2nd one after many years of the similar style being always junk.

Detected the park today for the first time, and was playing around with the settings. I found alot of bottle caps and pull tabs along with some change. Main thing I used was M2 on field mode with a recovery speed at 4, and a tone break of 4. Everything else is pretty much factory settings. I definitely do not know what I'm doing it and I'm mostly just winging it. What settings did people find most effective for beach detecting? I'm headed to the beach tomorrow and advice would be most appreciated!

I was able to get to the beach for three days last week. It should have been 7 days but appointments and dinner engagements made that impossible. Targets were not very deep and I was suprised to see competition on the beach. I guess everyone thought the hurricane earlier would cause opportunity. Here is the picture of the final digs.

Is anything worthwhile ever going to ring up as a 1 or 2? Like, could you find a gold ring at 1 on the VDI on the equinox 800? I was just wondering if these ultra low conductivity numbers will be trash or have a chance at being gold or something of value? It's right next to the trash range so just checking to see what everyone things. I do beach detecting if this matters 🙂

Today I went to good beach and a not so good beach! It is easy to know the difference between them. I can put some of my excuses away for a while. haha The trash to rings ratio was one of the best I've ever had. I was hoping to have the full day rather than just 2.5 hours but that didn't happen. I'm quite pleased with it anyway because it was not my intended beach. I had to get gas and that determined the new direction I had to go with limited time. Here is the not so good beach that I spent more time at than the good beach. (I don't think it will be that way tomorrow!) The 4 gold rings include a rare gold earring. The total weight is not too great but it was so much better than any of my previous hunts on the gold count. On my way out of the beach I ran into a forum member, Slim. I showed him what I found and I hope he was able to get some goodies of his own.

Hi Everyone, What is the best advice/tips that you can give to a beach detectorist to find jewelry or other valuable targets? Just curious because I know that years of experience beats all in most cases. Have a great day!

Hi everyone, I've been doing beach detecting and I'm new to it. This applies to both on dry sand and completely underwater detecting. More so with underwater I guess. With the 800 In beach two mode, just default out of the box equipment, My detector will sometimes make noise at the end of my swing when I start swinging the other way. It will also make noise when I tilt my wrist from left to right. The screen will also show numbers (falsing?) Sometimes faint noise sounds like a chirp really faint, sometimes it makes a noise at the beginning of each swing or changing directions. Is the detector broken or just sensitive? New to this. Is sensitivity too high underwater? 20.

Been awile since I've posted anything here. But I've been on an EPIC run the last 2 weeks. Last 4 hunts have produced gold. Some beaches have massive cuts. Others have been been overpowered by the surf , bringing sand down. A few sanded in , while others are unhuntable due to no sand at all. Yesterday's hunt hitting 4 beaches. I was out 11 hours but that included alot of drive time. Hunted well into the dark. 8 silver coins. 1 walker , 3 Washington's , 1 merc , 3 Rosie's. 2 pendants , 6 rings , 2 of which are 14k totalling 10 grams. Clad 31-5c , 72-10c , 26-25c. Total= $15.25. I didn't count the pennies. Some sinkers and trash for your enjoyment ! GL out there everyone.

For metal detecting on the beach, what is a very good beach scoop with a long handle that will not rust and is very high quality? It doesn't have to be extremely high quality I just don't want it to rust or break for a very long time. I bought one for $130 and the metal handle folded and the hardware was eaten up by rust, so I'm just trying to do some research before ordering one this time. Thanks in advance for your help! 🙂

Hurricane Kay was wonderful to me! Prior to Kay I was having a very slow year for gold finds but she changed all that in 1 week. I know that Kay was not so good for LA County beaches but, as Strick pointed out, a few beaches down south had massive amounts of sand movement making for some ideal hunting conditions. I think I hunted about 6 nights in the last 8 days and even though I encountered several other hunters, there were enough targets to go around. I found an amazing number of gold jewelry items but most were below 2 grams and nothing even close to being a "honker". Many targets were hiding in and around the black sand making them more difficult to find, even with my pulse detectors. On one hunt I used my Equinox but the black sand was making the Nox so chatty that I was getting a headache. My Nox's TID's were pretty useless as virtually all targets registered as negative numbers until I got them out of the holes. I am helping a couple of friends who are getting started in metal detecting and, fortunately, they were both able to experience hunting in a target rich environment. However, every time I went to the beach this past week I did not know what to expect - I either anticipated the beach to be sanded back in or full of holes from hunters who got there before me. GL&HH!

It was time for a hunt ... but I've done that each of the last few nights. Last night's hunt was better on the counts but it came up a bit short on the value. The first ring of the night I thought was my best until the next morning. I was finally able to read a 14kt GF. Bummer. It came in as a 21 so I'm not too surprised. Some of the other rings. An odd mix. The one missing the 'stone' is silver. Here are more pictures of the loot. The bottom of the aluminum can above was found down over 20 inches. I hate those digs but they sound so good. I've also included some pictures of previous hunts just to show the difference in nights. This last tray includes 3 rings and of note was one of my best 'spoon rings' ever. What is a spoon ring you say? It was once a silver spoon that was chopped off at the end and shaped into a ring. Notice the overlapping design which would allow for some adjustment and expansion.

If you are a beach hunter like I am most of the time then you have to deal with the crusty, corroded, rusted, scratchy beach sounds. I mostly use my Equinox 800 with 15 inch coil and I listen for targets first and interrogate until the target starts to identify itself. At some point I determine if I'm going to dig (most of the time) based upon the sound, ID and what I have been finding nearby. I'll dig tent stakes, shield pennies, screws (steel & iron) and other things. I sometimes say to myself if I'm not finding rusty bobby pins then I'm not in the right place. With all of that trash in mind and the new detectors coming out with improved chips and id displays, what do we know? I mean, do we know that the manufactures are trying to make these trash signals 'invisible' or actually show them and make the id so good we know not to dig like a pull tab at 14 for instance on the 800. What detector have you found that works the best on the crusties?

Hi Guys can anyone provide a real world, non-sponsored view on the XP deus 2 and bone phones - mainly for the beach and more importantly for the water/dive. I have a long experience with the excals, ATX, CTX and various other detectors - tried the original XP a long while ago and moved on quickly. Minelab have been so slow on a 'CTX replacement' - so the D2 11" needs some investigation. For those with the XP D2 machine - are you still happy - or wished you waited for the new minelab CTX 4040! (one can dream??) Thoughts appreciated before spending the $ OBN?? Dale

With out a doubt. Pick any 10 hunters ,any 10 different machines starting from $200 up to unlimited. It would be very hard to bet against any of them. Except for ruling out the guy who swings his coil up to his hip.

This is not jewelry but they were all found in the sand while hunting for jewelry. In the past 3 months or so I have been digging Kennedy halves on the beach. I found 3 one time, 2 one time and singles 8 times. The dates are from 1971-2000. Anyone else find this odd???

Out looking for Gold rings again today, mostly trash exept for a few coins, but they add up fast I almost have 100.00 again in coins, and the rest is trash .Looking for Gold rings is like investing in the stock market, you just have to keep at it and eventually it will pay off, if you sell because the market goes down , you will not make money , and if i quit because i only find junk 6 days in a row you have to keep at it cuz the big ring is out in that field just waiting to be found , maybe under a bottle cap , or amongst the pull tabs and Can slaw and foils , mostly disappointment, but good exercise.

First switched to the Standard Coil for this hunt. Good idea to lightly grease the coil fittings while I'm at it. Dicided to use the Tarsacci Headphones so removed the PigTail. Pigtail was a little stubborn after having been on there for sometime. Little shot of oil did the trick. Won't let that happen again. Refreshed myself on directions for G ballencing, and everything else I might have to change for a Salt water beach. Of course taking both coils, some spare parts just in case. Another thing making a check list to make sure I don't forget everything else I need. Like make sure my Scoop handle isn't ready to snap in half. Little things like that. We all been threw it.

Had a little time and felt good so went to the river and set my chair up and hit the water. About an hour later with a pouch full of scrap i headed for my coffee cup swinging along. Right in front of the chair i got a great high tone. Nice little sterling ring! Poped it on my key chain. Pic shows the scoop in the silver hole. Haad a lot more trash but emptied out once before

I've been making the most of some very low tides to hunt at the back of my local bays.. Amongst a load of crap, this is yesterday's haul from Alma Bay.. $32 and some cheap jewellery.. This haul really opened my eyes to the differences in success between scuba and beach detecting.. These coins and jewellery were found along a swimming/snorkelling zone where I usually dive (3 to 5 metres deep).. To my great and eternal shame, I missed them.. Although some are newly dropped, others have been there a long while.. Covering this zone on scuba takes a long time.. Visibility is not always what you'd expect for a tropical island.. Constant channel dredging for a nearby port and mangrove swamps along the coast keep our waters pretty murky.. Also, the smaller coils on the Deus II and PulseDive make it harder to cover large areas.. This compares to covering the same zone whilst beach detecting with larger coils: strolling along the beach, cherry-picking juicy targets and digging as deep as you like without the hole washing away.. You can see what you're doing and the target stays where it's supposed to be, all this makes the job much faster.. Although not necessarily more enjoyable as the challenge is gone.. On scuba the biggest haul along this zone in one morning was $6.50 and an silver earing.. In bays which have shark nets the scuba vs beach hunting ratio is usually the other way around, as people are herded together in one small space.. I'm lucky that on the island coins are still in everyday use, even in a mostly cashless society the island's busses still only accept cash.. As do all small businesses like the tourist stalls at markets along the beach, the 'tropical fruit juice lady' and the seafood van which sells straight from the island's trawlers.. This means there's a regular supply of coins dropped at our three main bays, all within 5 minutes from my house.. Yes, I know.. I'm a lucky son of a.. very nice lady!

Hi People, I have serious doubts regarding equinox. In wet sand I don't find a single gold object. I dig everything above VDI 0. Do you mine gold below 0? Settings: Beach 1 or 2 recovery 6 Sensitivity 20-22 FE F2: 0 My beach attached, and my path line horizontal and vertical...(I found a lot of plumbs) Best regards,

My style of hunting is always enhanced when wave energy is right. Last night there was a reasonable amount of energy that washed coins ($6) and rings (5) up and also washed some of the sand from the blanket line down. This is what happens when you get a 'cut' on the beach. I've had much better hunts and I'm still on a gold drought, but the chain and silver ring are pretty nice. There is an unusual black ring with gold lettering that I can't recognize. Does anyone have any ideas?

Early morning dive today and second time on the seabed with the D2. Nothing to say about the Anderson shaft...Just amazing. Talking about the D2,I found useful to use the pitch tone and the treshold to make it as similar as possible to the analog oldie in my hearth... I'd say that numbers are almost not relevant, cause with this machine I just dig it all now... Happy for the first piece with it, especially for the damn place where dozens of competitors already sucked dredging all the shines days ago...This actually means that with proper tuning and some luck, if there's something more,You can still pull it out with the D2. Really scarce time for me now and no video for today... Sorry... Cheers from Europe Skull 💀