Beach hunting and tides question

[MrNelson]

So after some research, I've hunted low tide 5 times so far for 4 to 6 hours a trip and have only come up with a total of 31 cents of clad, 3 tent stakes, and a throng of pulltabs and bottlecaps. I love my newfound hobby, but I have three questions.

1: Why does my Sov Elite give tone on pull tabs when using Disc mode regardless of where i set notch and disc knobs?

2A: When hunting beach at low tide, where should i be hunting (near the water's edge, where shells collect, etc)?
B: I have attatched a tide chart for my local area. When should I be hunting to achieve optimal number of targets?

3: If i chose to hunt high tide, where would be the best approach?

Many thanks in advance!
View attachment Fernandina-Beach-Amelia-River-Florida.bmp

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Upgraded Night Vision Monocular Digital Infrared Monocular Telescope for 100% Darkness with 8X Zoom - Grab it through Amazon!

[Treasure_Hunter]

When hunting the beach you don't want to use desc or notch, if your descriminating out gold... If you want the gold your going to have to dig the pulltabs and aluminum.... You hunt low tides because your able to cover more wet beach that was at one time under water.....

As far as where is the best place to hunt that varies from beach to beach.... I prefer the wet sand and in the water myself, other people prefer the dry and wet sand...Have you sat at the beach and studied where people are at..... Most all beaches have zones of areas of people...... It is the zones you want to hunt......

There will be many trips to the beach where you don't find anything, 5 trips is not that many, especially on the east coast of Florida right now... East coast of Florida is sanded in pretty good at the moment, recent drops is usually about all your going to find if your lucky right now........YOu can move up or down the coast and hunt different beaches.....

Welcome to beach hunting, if it was easy everyone would be doing it.........

 

[MrNelson]

Hunt the zones, different area beaches, and stick to populated areas for recent drops.
And dig every tone except iron null outs.
Sounds like a plan! Anyone got any other tips?

 

[stevemc]

You want as low a disc as possible, 0-1. Dont disc, gold jewelry is the first thing you will loose. I like the disc/pinpoint on disc since it nulls on iron, but other than that dig it all. Gold jewelry has many sounds, and if deep not much of a sound. DONT DISC OUT THINGS!!!!! Hunt at low tide is best, but any time youcan get out is good.

 

[MrNelson]

Our tourist season has just ended up here in NE FL, so not as many fresh drops as usual. and the low tides are getting higher as you can see. I'm going to try all metal tomorrow morning on the dry sand for a bit. Wont be able to hit low tides till Thursday evening.

 

[hamiddetecting]

Discri=0 and Notch=0 are the best for hunt.

 

[Terry Soloman]

1) Set your discrimination to iron only.

2) At low tide, restrict your hunt to wet sand, and GRID from the high water mark down to the water ankle deep, turn around, take a step to the side, and detect back up to the high water mark overlapping your swings. DO NOT just walk up or down the beach at the water line.

3) At high tide, concentrate on the towel line, or the dry sand where people lay out to sun just above the high water line. Choose an area 50' x 50' and grid the dickens out of it.

 

[bigscoop]

TH is correct in regards to the amount of sand on the east coast right now, and to make matters worse, it's all pretty much soft sand, so with a single tide change heavier items can get deeper much faster. To give you an idea of what you're dealing with, there are areas on my local beaches where the shell pack is normally fairly shallow, but right now even the shallowest shell pack areas have three feet of soft wet sand over them. Think of it as being quicksand because it pretty much has the same effect on the heavier items we're wanting to find. Same goes for the troughs between the bars, a lot of deep soft sand in them at present. Problem is, the beach may look the same from one day to the next but it isn't and as this soft sand gets shifted and giggled around at high tide heavier items continue to slip deeper. But there is a positive to all this that you need to keep in mind. Once this sand starts getting pulled back out, and the winter tides will eventually achieve this, there's going to be "a lot" of targets to be had. When you start finding green/red coins, tarnished lead weights, heavier pieces of scrap iron, etc.,.......get excited and start covering every inch. Until then, hope for recent drops and focus on the low spots whenever and wherever they may develop.

 

[Coldshuz]

On a few of the beaches on the west coast of FL, I have found that there are "troughs" running along the beach. Trough being where the the sand drops down and then back up parallal to the shoreline leaving a low area in the sand. I usually walk this trough at low tide and has produced my best finds. In fact, I found where two of these troughs ran together, and then channeled themselves to the deeper water. Where they merged, I pulled nearly $5 in clad within a 2-3 ft circle in about 10 mins. Another great thing about these troughs is there is still 6-12 inches of water in them. Once I scoop, I'll run the water through it and it clears the sand much faster then shaking the scoop.

 

[MrNelson]

First off MANY thanks to all who have contributed! I'm trying to understand the sand game, and i think i got a good foundation of how it works now. Got rained out this morning, so no hunting for me till Thursday evening.

 

[Hag730]

I dont live that far from you and have tried detecting the beaches in your area 3 or 4 times this summer.......the sand is like soup in most places. I'm using a PI machine and had trouble finding junk. Just keep hoping for a tropical storm to come up the coast and take some of that sand off the beach.

 

[MrNelson]

I've found some junk for sure.. but no gold or silver I just wish i could hit this low tides, man. It made 5 or 6 gorgeous cuts today right in front of a "Ritzy" fancy hotel

 

[Crispin]

This may be a little pretentious, but... make sure your metal detector is low to the ground. When I started I was about three inches off of the ground. When another kind metal detector told me to lower it I started getting an expotential increase in targets. When I detect now my detector pretty much scrapes the top of the sand.

 

[AC1955]

As Crispin said...position your coil low, almost "kissing" the sand. Also - go very slow. Don't rush your swings, you're not playing golf, after all. I've heard of some MDer's who take 30 seconds to complete one swing of the coil. If you are detecting too fast, you will miss targets. As others have said, pick an area of the beach and grid the heck out of it. Don't try to MD the whole beach, detect small sections at a time very thoroughly. Last advice - dig it all! Yes, you will probably dig up lots of junk, but think of it this way - you are doing a community service by cleaning the beach of potentially dangerous objects. Who wants to cut themselves on pull tabs and can slaw? Also, by cleaning up the junk you will not detect them the next time you are detecting that portion of beach.

Get out as often as you can and most of all enjoy yourself. Low and slow in a small area and the treasures should find you!

HH,
Anita

 

[MrNelson]

Low and Slow.. cool deal! I'm going to go after work tonight to see how i fare by chasing the tide out.

 

[surfnturf]

1: Why does my Sov Elite give tone on pull tabs when using Disc mode regardless of where i set notch and disc knobs?

2A: When hunting beach at low tide, where should i be hunting (near the water's edge, where shells collect, etc)?
B: I have attatched a tide chart for my local area. When should I be hunting to achieve optimal number of targets?

3: If i chose to hunt high tide, where would be the best approach?



1: Dig all good returning signals! 100 pull tabs & bottle caps='s 1 GOLD Ring!!

A: Lower wet sand area! Look for cuts,ripps and dips in the shore line
B: 2 hrs before 2 hrs after low tide

3: In the water as deep as you can go!!!

Important*
Have FUN!!!! GL!!

SnT

 

[MrNelson]

Thanks, SnT! I hit the beach last night and found 2 bobby pins, a fresh drop usd quarter, two regular pennies and the brass backing of a military rank pin. I noticed that the further the tide rolled out the more i found. Im excited to go out again but i'd like to hit low tide during daylight as it seems to be more cuts during the day low tide than night low tide!

 

[Native Floridian]

Sounds to me like you've got most of it down. A few things and a couple more:

Work the out going tide as much as possible. The beach is a kinder gentler place on a receding tide. The two hours before low is best. Working through the low into an hour or two of incoming also works.

If there are no obvious low spots or cuts on the beach start by working a W pattern up and down from the mid or high tide line down to the water. This will establish a find line. Once established grid above and below that line.

Go where the people go. Don't waste time searching deserted beaches. That is, unless those beaches were used generations ago.

Don't disc anything but iron. Much of the bling is found at the same freq as the trash. Some very succesful hunters work in all metal. Why pay for all the electronics to disc out the iron and not use it? Well, the machine can see deeper once all the limiters are off. So, while you'll get more bobbi pins at 18 inches than gold, you will get the gold if it's there.

Lastly, slow down! If you aren't walking slow, make it the rule!!

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

If your finding bobby pins your hunting in all metal, switch to desc unless your wanting to dig them.

 

[stevemc]

You see on your tide chart it says next Spring tide is Oct 15th, well that will be a very low low tide. Spring tide is when the sun and moon are rising and setting together and have more pull on the tides. Try to work the sring tides hard, a few days before and after it will have lower than usual lows. Also if you find lead sinkers and lots quarters, it seems you are in a good area. You can find an area that has old coins and lead and other heavy metal, stay and work that area. You will notice a scallop of the beach, where the waves have eroded away the beach, these are good. I was up in Savannah GA Christmas time last year and hunted the island out there at very low tide. I found nothing while way out near the water, not even trash, worked all around, and finally started finding coins, most corroded way up by the sea oats. All at least a foot down. About every foot. All I found was a lot of corroded modern coins. Defintly above the high tide zone but wetsand. You just have to keep working it to see a pattern. Also if you see shells piling up, you will usually find aluminum can parts , pulltabs, and maybe zinc pennies. Light weight stuff. Look for areas of gravelly looking or at least heavier than normal sand. But you never know what might be there.. Sometimes it pays to know what different beaches do in certain weather conditions. Some erode, and some pile up in a certain wind and nwaves. It pays to check out many beaches, not just the closest to your house. Where I live there are some beaches that get hit hard, and the people will work right to the edge of the public beach, in the water and land. They seldom go past the lifeguarded zone ends. Go where you dont see a person detecting every day. Try to find places that are never hit. Bayside beaches, islands that people go to, walk a way down a beach to get away from where is always detected. Where you can drive on the beach or along it, do that and find places where people go. Tiny beach accesses. Oh, you can hunt in all metal or pin point, but you can switch back to disc to see if it is iron. But iron will mask gold, especially if the iron is large or close to the surface.. In a good area like I wrote about where you are finding quarters and lead , and jewelry, a nice hole, you might dig up iron, because it may be hiding gold jewelry, I have seen it.