I'm not doing badly, but I'm not doing great either. A couple of things that have helped;
A) I'm staying off the areas of deeper, softer sand. Not even hunting close to the low tide waterline because of all the sand buildup.
B) I've started hunting from dunes to just above the low tide waterline in a tight pattern, if after three or four passes the pickings are too slim I move to another area. If the pickings are steady I keep using the same pattern until I can identify the most productive zone, then I'll start hunting that zone, or band, in a back and forth parallel pattern.
C) Not hunting the usual wet sand cuts and troughs because if you do a bit of probing it's all soft sand buildup underneath.
Without a doubt my best days are during, and right after, conditions that have produced stronger surf/turbulence. Most of the gold I've found has come from the high tide water line to about 1/2 - 3/4 way down the wet sand slope, beyond that the sand on the beaches I hunt is just too soft and too deep. When I do go to the beach I take a cooler and lunch/snacks and I stay most of the day and I hunt a lot of beach. I've not been in the water too much because there's just too much soft sand right now, but I'm planning to spend more time out there.
I've been charting my gold finds and here's a simple drawing of the results so far this year. Notice that 80% of my gold has come from just one main beach zone;
Also, I have a WOT on my Excal, not so much for the depth but for the added coverage so I can cover a lot of beach at a decent depth in day of hunting. So when I do go I'm spending a lot of time and I'm covering a lot of upper, harder sandy beach. 13 gold & 9 silver so far this year and I don't go all that much, usually Mondays and maybe an extra day through the week. But I'm learning a lot about how daily water/current conditions effect the beach and I think that's really helping.
