Deploying Suspended Weights For Finding Gold In The Water

[Roln99]

Tie a few feet of fishing line to some small lead weights and affix balloons to the line... set it loose down the river and watch where the weights settle - that's a good place to start your hunt for gold

I came up on this gold finding tip on the gold fever prospector's website. Can anyone validate this technique?

 

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[Cachefinder]

no ......but sounds real interesting--let me know how it goes

Cachefinder-

 

[Roln99]

After searching the internet for further clarification I came up empty handed. I also emailed the guy who initially submitted this technique but no response. So I did my own research and after reading this ad I noticed certain key phrases that immediately caught my attention. I pretty much found the answers that I was seeking. This inspired the development phase of this adventure. The following are some products & an idea of achieving optimum results:

Drennan Crystal Avon Floats
The Crystal Avon is designed for fishing in rivers or canals that have a steady low flow. Its crystal main body blends into the water, reducing the chance of being detected by fish. If the river depth is only one or two feet, any other float will be noticed by the fish as the presentation is so close to the float. Its widened mid-body increases stability in turbulent waters, reducing the wobbling effect. The thinning of the float's tail increases its sensitivity by reducing the friction when being pulled by a fish.

For spinning anglers, the Crystal Avon can be used to drift in small streams for cutthroat trout, rainbow trout and dolly varden. Ideally, this float should be used in two to six feet of water that has a slow current. Your other gear should match the float, therefore light line such as 4 pound test and small weights should be used.

Its sensitivity allows the smallest bite to be detected, yet it does not submerge when following by eddies. Differentiation between a bite and a snag is very easy with the Crystal Avon, a feature that a foam float cannot deliver.

The Crystal Avon comes in four different sizes, ranging from 6" to 6 3/4". The largest size is ideal for the small streams, whereas the smaller ones cannot withstand the current of most streams.

In addition to the length, each float is marked with a gram weight on the side. The four gram weights we offer are 2.5, 3.5, 4.5 and 6.0. This weight is not the weight of the float itself, but rather the amount of weight in grams that the float will support. We carry four colors of caps for these floats, yellow, orange, flo. orange and flo. pink.

Specifications
Model Size Length Weight
No. 1 3AA 6" 2.5 g
No. 2 4AA 6 1/4" 3.5 g
No. 3 5AA 6 1/2" 4.5 g
No. 4 7AA 6 3/4" 6.0 g


I've attached a conceptual image of a prototype "Alluvial Placer Spotter". If anyone decides to give this a shot before I'm able to please post your results!!!

 

[Cachefinder]

Very Interesting

I just wish i lived by a river/ stream to try this out.(looks like i could make one myself)-no prob

Let me know how it goes!

Cachefinder-

 

[aa battery]

there is someone here that pmed me last year uses this method. i never tried a ballon and lead but who knows.

 

[Roln99]

I just had a brainstorm!!! Somehow I can attach this arrangement to a fishing rod and therefore I can not only cast it into the stream but also maintain a measure of control as well as recoverability. Any insights?

 

[cosmic]

I don't know for sure if it will work, but worth a shot..You can see and feel the the edges of currents, if that's whats you want..One thing though is that gold moves during a flood and the bigger gold move mostly during a 100 year flood if at all.. Currents are usually totally different during a flood.. So it seems to me unless your going to try during a flood you won't get the results your looking for...
Ray

 

[pippinwhitepaws]

that method might work if there is water in the creeks...don't believe it would work in most of the west....that weight might keep the balloon from flying away in the wind...

 

[boogeyman]

Yeah Pippin, Sure wouldn't work well in South AZ would it? Might work ok for finding the motherload of designer sunglasses on the salt!

The only problem with this technique I see, is the time factor. Grab some books & field experience. With a little research & a fair amount of practice, you can pretty much read a stream or wash without carrying the extra gear. As far as the floats go, by the time I dropped a couple of floats in the water, waited for them to drift, unhooked them from snags etc. etc. I can sample pan 8 or 10 likely looking spots. More gold less gear.

 

[Shortstack]

This idea is very, very similar to the technique Andy Sabisch developed for shallow water hunting at public ocean beaches. He used brightly colored, cheap plastic fishing bobbers, long line, and lead fishing weights. He explained his use of these tools in his book, Advanced Water Working Techniques.

 

[goldbrick]

I have to agree with Cosmic. This is a dubious technique devised by someone with little knowledge of gold deposition. Any big gold only moves when the whole streambed is picked up during the largest of floods. In western rivers at least, the flow is so much greater that an area of rapids at normal flows may be the low pressure zone at max flood. To be fair, areas of smaller flood gold may deposited annually at lesser flows, but these areas are still unlikely to be the same ones you find by floating balloons downstream at low flows. A person interested in finding gold would be better served by spending their time intently studying some of the books available to the modern prospector. Dave McCracken's books have excellent, detailed explanations of how and why gold is deposited in streams and rivers. IMHO
L8tr,
Merton

 

[Seden]

It's been my experience to use either a White's GMT or MXT to find the spot where the heavies lay by taking readings on the type and amount of iron content (GMT will give you the amount as well as the type but I've used both). If you can afford a proton Magnetometer so much the better which is the industry standard for reading a river.

Randy

 

[tertiaryjim]

I've heard that the people used to tie long brightly colored ribbons to lead weights and through them in the river during floods. The ribbon would sometimes be visible after the water level receded- showing where gold would likely settle. The Game and Fish people might not like that these days.

 

[MEinWV]

I don't think anything is better than actual experience in the rivers, sample panning and looking at the lay of the bedrock. It doesn't take long for the average person with intuition and some common sense to figure out where the best possible spots are to find gold. I have seen spots where others had scraped the sand deposits off the bedrock in an attempt to find gold. The thing that struck me the most is that they didn't follow the basic rules of gold, in that; "Gold will always go to the absolute lowest point as it is possible for it to go. They may have found some gold, I don't know! But, I went that extra step further and dug out the crevices in the bedrock that they skimmed over, and found gold.

Don't get me wrong here, I have spent lots of time thinking about doing the same things you are talking about. I think your ideas definitely have merit. I have thought about the way rings act in the ocean surf, which would be different than coins. I thought about attaching lines to rings and throwing them into the surf to see what happens. The variant here is that the line would alter the object(ring or lead weight), and influence the movement in the water. A flotation device would actually drag the object along the bottom, altering the normal travel.

Good luck in your endeavors! I like the way you think! It shows me that your level of interest is high, and you will do good by your thinking.

HH

 

[boogeyman]

Was thinking a little more on this. It might be a better route to go if you made up some small sluices like the poop tubes & staked them in the stream/ creek and left them for a day or two. Watch the weather forcasts put em out right before a rain. Go back & pan out what evers in them. Would probably be a little more accurate than balloons & sinkers.

Still, the best route to go is to get proficient in your panning technique, and run some sample pans. You'll get further with less gear and less trips. Like my buddy says, "If your back & knees aren't aching You're slacking"

 

[Goldwasher]

a balloon tied to a lead weight is not a gold nugget so it wont act like one. when you find a nugget or any gold for that matter you dont know its last position before the one you found it in, if you toss a weighted balloon in a creek you are that fake nuggets last position before it moved wich is very unnatural so it also is not gonna help you especially if your not doing it during serious flood level.look at all the crap and debris in the trees around you and youll know how high the water gets. if you put a passive nugget trap in a creek or river a couple days time will tell you nothing at all..... think about it gold moves during floodstage or during mining only if the bed of the creek was moving enough to move gold you wont have clear water. think simple read old books talk to other people who find gold and spend as much time by the water as possible and even when you can read a creek gold is where you find it.and not where you think it should be sometimes.

 

[BIG61AL]

This has a serious flaw. This assumes that the lead will settle in the same place as gold BUT that implies that the gold was in the exact starting place as the lead. Gold [small] will migrate over time. Just because gold is deposited in one place doesn't mean it stays there. If gold is redeposited it tends to go the same conditions where it was deposited before. If one is serious about finding placer gold then one should know how and where gold get deposited and not to rely on a lead weight and balloon.