looking for someone who has panned or sluiced swift river in Maine.

[vaquero44]

I have the pans, but want to get into sluicing mini dredging and trying to learn or find what has been the best method for this area? any help would be great? not much black sand to deal with I guess more placier gold or veins of it in bedrock.

 

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[GrizzlyGremlin]

The swift river has been pounded by guys for many many years. Most all of the famous nuggets found in bryon have been had already. This fact that very large pieces have been found here attracts many people like the wild am in NH. The thing about bryon maine is that almost every stream in the area has decent gold. Noone will just tell u exactly where to go but my suggestion is to get thoes pans dirty. Start where everyone else does on the east branch and have fun. If you like back breaking work for pennies an hour then you will have a ball!!! I know i do!!

 

[vaquero44]

hello there Grizzlygrmln, yeah i'm not far from Byron and have tried to pan over the years with not much success but sluicing has got my interest, also have tried panning creeks and streams not far from me here in western maine and all I find is garnet no black sand to speak of sometimes do lucky will find some tourmaline

 

[placertogo]

You have to work the crevices and fissures. Best time is July through September when the river level is down and there is a lot of exposed dry bedrock that was pounded during Spring runoff.

 

[tvanwho]

I got 2 small nuggets up there one year just digging out small potholes on exposed bedrock that was 5 feet above the river,was august/sept I think.The nuggets were about 1/4 inch long. I picked the dirt out of the potholes and ran it in my little Keene sluice and got a nice surprise. Gots to watch out for hurricanes in late fall as they can dump tons of rain on the river and you don't want to be there at flood stage. I use copper or brass dowsing rods to pick a spot to dig, sometimes it does work, sometimes not.

-Tom V.