FINALLY FOUND A GOLD NUGGET!!! WOOHOO!

[mattisdell1983]

Hey guys, after about a year or searching and panning and sluicing and sniping...lol I finally found my first flake/nugget picker. it is about a quarter of an inch by a quarter of an inch! I gave up on trying to find gold from the shore so I went to my local dive shop and got a wetsuit, flippers,gloves,booties and a snorkel mask and my 3rd time out I finally got the gold! I do have a question though, I have done hours and hours of research on how to snipe for gold underwater in the bedrock and everywhere I was looking where I thought gold would be, it wasnt. But where I just randomly looked, it was there! I know they say gold is where you find it but is there anymore really good advice I could get on a technique or areas for sniping to increase my gold finding chances? websites about sniping techniques? thanks alot guys, Matt isdell

p.s. I live in crescent city,california (as northern california as you can go) and I was in the smith river where a small creek opened up to the river. Im just not sure if it was carried by the rivers water or the creek ,lol

 

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[midnightmoon]

Congrats!

And you may have confirmed what I recently learned ... where the water suddenly widens, if there's gold being washed along, it'll drop when it hits the larger waterway. Has to do with force and water pressure.

First of many to you, for sure!

 

[Oakview2]

How about a picture of your find?

 

[NeoTokyo]

Congrats on the find, now get us a pic.

 

[TerryC]

Northern CA and the Mother Lode got hit hard back when dredges were still legal. Look in the feeder creeks to the big one. They don't even have to be wet yearround. Look for the benches and anchient riverbeds that may be uphill from the creek/river. I have only been (very) actively looking for gold for about 5 years. Not doing bad in The Mother Lode and the Rich Hill area in AZ. Other old salts here are doing better. They will pipe in shortly. Now, go find some more! TTC

 

[Lanny in AB]

Congratulations on the first one--you'll never forget it. Gold is sometimes found in strange places, and even the wrong places (or so it seems). However, you have to imagine the stream at extreme flood stage and imagine what was happening when things were really roaring through. Sometimes that accounts for gold in places that make no sense when the stream is running during its low water stage. And, remember that when gold is being transported at flood stage, it will take the shortest route between two points as it works its way downstream--some people give gold personal attributes and call it "lazy" for this reason. I too have found gold in the "wrong" places before, enough times so that it doesn't shock me anymore.

Important note on finding gold in the wrong places: be sure to head back and do a careful search of all the surrounding dirt in the area where the gold was found--gold is gregarious (it likes company), and very rarely in a stream does it travel alone. Something made it/makes it drop. I had a friend send me a note once about a spot he was dredging--he was getting nothing where the gold should have been, but off on the wrong side of the river he recovered a whole line of nuggets--no fines--just nuggets. He still has no idea why they were there, but they were.

On a personal note, I was dredging an inside bend once--a prime spot for gold to collect. However, early in the spring I'd made a trek to the river to see what was happening during flood stage. The river was really roaring--pounding the stream-bed and bedrock with boulders half the size of smart cars. That inside bend was not where the river was slowing the most. It was slowing across the river where a big bedrock cliff was stopping huge trees and anything else that was getting slammed in to it. So, I recalled that fact, stopped dredging for a bit, and waded over to the other side. I dropped in and went for a swim.

There was hardly any accumulation of gravel on the exposed bedrock under the water--it had mostly been blasted clean, but there on a bedrock lip lodged in a couple of cracks were two sassy gram+ nuggets. Of course I pried them out and gave them a new home, but without doing the observation at high water in the spring, I'd never have thought to check that spot later in the season, as it was completely on the wrong side of the river, and there was no accumulation of gravel.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[mattisdell1983]

Hey thnx guys, that helps alot. As soon as i get home i will post a pic of my gold. I can't seem to do it from my phone