Danny, If there's been no erosion, then the finds will be random. Ie.: wherever they just happen to be, based on the traffic patterns of the beach. But after storm erosion, you look for low spots, where erosion has occured (sand scoured out). And hopefully the beach in those zones will be like mother nature's sluicebox/riffleboard. The targets will all be deposited in patterns. As for whether it's up high (closer to the dry), or down lower (closer to the water's edge), you just have to sample around and see. Once you start finding targets, then circle around them to see if it's part of a pattern/deposit (as opposed to a random singular target).
The "low spots" can be just a portion of the beach where you can tell (be standing way down the beach) that a certain portion has the wet extend further in, than the rest of the beach. Ie.: a damper spot. Sometimes they can resemble inverted scallop shapes (hence the name "scallops" we call them). Cuts (vertical steep drops from the dry down to the wet) is another sign of erosion. Abnormally steep slopes (where they didn't previously exist) is another type erosion shape.
Knowing the "norm" of your particular beach is the only real way to know whether your beach is eroding or not. Because some beaches get slopes or scallops all the time, and it doesn't necessarily mean erosion. You just have to know the "norm" look.
And by "storms", it doesn't necessarily mean actual local wind and rain. You can get swells that hit your beaches that came from storms far away, yet the swells travel all the way to your end of the continent. You can study the surfer's tides and swells charts, buoy reports, etc.... to see if above normal and customary surf action is slated to occur. Conversely sometimes storms (local wind and rain) do no erosion, *if* they are coming from the wrong direction and aren't reaching your particular beaches. For example: if your coast-line beach, where you have in mind hunting, faces SW, and the swells are coming from the NW, well the logic dictates your beaches are "shadowed", and not getting a direct impact from the swell (despite how ferocious and rainy it might be). So even the term "storms" sort of "depends". Sometimes storms bring stand IN, while other storms take sand OUT.
