Second trip out with the homemade sluice

[hurthawk]

With the saga of Diane's broken leg still continuing, I have not gone prospecting in the past few weeks. But, I did get a window of opportunity for Sat. so I planned the trip. After an entire summer of sunny days, the weather gods decided to break the drought on (you guessed it) Saturday. Undaunted, I packed up my homemade sluice, put on the raingear and headed for a friend's claim. It was wet, but not unbearable. I was interested to note that after the most intense shower the creek rose 2 inches within 20 minutes. Despite the inclement conditions, I did find a nice hole in the bedrock. It was in the shape of an inverted pyramid and the tip of the hole was 3 1/2 feet down into the bedrock ( a perfect gold trap). There was some gold layered in the 4-5 feet of overburden but most of the gold came from the hole. I got one decent nugget, some pickers and lots of flakes. My guess would be around 5-6 grams but I have not finished panning out the cons. (I did include a pic of the inspection mat)
Sunday I had an invite to join a friend dredging on the Mokulume river. The dredge season is over on the 15th so he was trying to get one more trip in before the deadline. He got an ounce with his 4' dredge the last three trips to the area. I have never dredged before so I was looking forward to learning the process. I did bring my homemade sluice along to run a few buckets but I was happy with Saturday's take so I didn't plan to dig like a gopher on Sunday.
The weather was incredible, the river was back to a good flow from bank to bank (last week it was only flowing in 1/2 the channel), the birds were chirping and all was well with the world.
I set up my sluice and ran 5 buckets through it. As I was classifying the last bucket, I glanced up and saw my inspection mat starting to float downstream, I seems that the silicone glue I used to glue the mat down was not up to the demands of the swiftly flowing river. A corner came loose and once the camel had his nose under the tent it was not long before the mat was torn away. I did manage to retrieve it but, the flow had been screwed up in the sluice so most of my gold was returned to the river. I found 4 pickers jammed under the leading edge of the carpet and did recover some flakes and fines.
I spent the rest of the day tending the dredge sluice.
It was a fun and educational day for me (now I have to start saving up for a dredge)
Happy Hunting,
Rick