Advice for water hunt with rock/sand beach

[James57]

I tried water hunting at a new beach at a lake last weekend that seems promising. The problem is that the bottom is all rocks about 0.5"-3" in diameter and there is just enough sand to hold them together so they are not loose at all. I was expecting a sandy beach so I had my sand scoop. It was almost useless because I could not push it into the rocks to dig. The best that I could do was to push rocks into my scoop with my foot, lift it out of the water and remove the rocks to locate the target.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to dig here?

It seems like a good spot because almost everything that I recovered was a coin. There were targets everywhere but I was only able to recover a handful of coins in 4 hours - very little junk. I think that most detectorists would give up on this lake and head for a sandy spot. The sand is also very black but it does not bother my Headhunter PI diver.

I was thinking of snorkeling and digging with a small shovel or trowel. Has anyone else run across a site like this? The beach has been used for years so I am sure that there are silver coins in there. I heard a lot of deeper coin-sized targets but I could only recover the shallow ones. Digging 6" into the rocks with a scoop while standing chest deep in the water would be nearly impossible.

 

[TreasurdiggrNY]

I hunted a lake that had chunky rocks like that, what a pain, I know how you feel. I ended up not using the scoop in the shallow area. I did it by hand, when I got a hit I would move the rocks out of the way and then pulled up hands full of sand and waved it in front of the coil. Most targets were in the first handful of sand. I Pulled out a couple of nice silver
In the deeper water(I could only go a lil past knee deep due to a steep drop-off) when I got a signal, I pushed the rocks out of the way a little with my foot, this allowed me to get the diamondhead scoop into the sand.
Here is the scoop

 

[chipveres]

Fiskars makes a stainless-steel transplanter, a tiny shovel. I got one for $4 in the Walmart garden department. I have also seen (but not tried) an orange plastic trowell sold in camping supplies to cover up #2 during backpacking expeditions.

Chip V.

 

[Sandman]

For digging in these hard bottoms you need a real scoop like the Diamond Head or the Sunspot in my post. Both are very good for these hard rocks. It has been my experience that targets don't get as deep in the rocks as they do in sand.

 

[James57]

Thanks for the advice! I will have to get one of those diamond head scoops. It looks like it would work.

 

[MikeDahms]

If the water is clear get a mask and snorkel. You can work up to about 5 ft. deep. Also one of those garden hand rakes, the small ones that you hold in one hand and are about 6 in. long and have three tines might be helpful. Sounds like a great spot to work for a long time. Best to you, Mike.