Hi New to the forum and prospecting

[Built_in_USA]

Hello all, my name is Jeremy. I just got a pan kit from my g/f for x-mas and just got a yellow jacket 48" sluice. I'm going on my first trip ever leaving late Thurs. night. I'm from N.J.(south, a totally different state from the northern part of NJ) and will be starting out prospecting in NC. I practiced panning by cutting up a .177 caliber pellet in 6 pieces and putting them in a full pan of dirt(it's like beach sand almost but grey in color). I got panning down pretty decent by practicing for a few hours and always got all 6 pieces (takes me a while per pan but I don't lose anything) This upcoming trip was planned about 6 months ago as a giant bluefin tuna fishing trip but now it is going to start as a prospecting trip and end as a prospecting trip. I have a cabin booked at "Mountain Creek" gold mine for the first few days. I called and asked and they said I could dig wherever I want to and run it threw my sluice which is what I would like to do. I know I would prolly find more gold buying it by the tractor load but that takes most of the fun out of it in my eyes. I guess I'm really after the whole experience looking for spots that I think be hold/trap gold in the river/stream or on the hill sides. If I don't like "Mountain Creek" or the cabin is too nasty I will try another pay to dig site. When I get done BFT fishing it will be March 15th when a few other mines open up such as "Thermal City" and a few others. I already reserved the cabin at Mountain Creek for the first few days but where would you guys recommend I go for the end of my trip? Welp I gotta go back to my Grandpop's for the 4th night in a row since my grandmom is in the hospital w/ a heart problem and he doesn't have internet so I will check back tomorrow if I can get home. I look forward to learning more from this site and soon contributing to this site as well as posting reports from my trips.






Proud lifetime member of the NRA

 

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[GrizLeeBear]

Greetings and welcome to the club. Glad to have a new seeker out there. Happy Hunting!

 

[ret-detector]

Welcome...

from Central Florida!


ret

 

[Terry Soloman]

Big Gold from White Plains, New York!

 

[Built_in_USA]

Whats up ya'll, I'm Leaving at 2:00 am tonite/tomorrow. Mountain creek will be my first attempt at finding some gold stuff. I will be going to a hotel in the outer banks for our bluefin tuna trip starting on monday. They supposedly have internet there and I am bringing my computer so I will post a report to letcha ya'll know how we made out. I got a couple spots to check out in the general area(not pay to dig actual prospecting) for are next attempt at this hobby. One thing I like about this hobby is it's alot cheaper then fishing w/ the price of fuel and tackle.

 

[Terry Soloman]

Get Some!

 

[Built_in_USA]

Well my first try wasn't so hot but I'm gonna try again next week, when I'm coming back home from the keys. I heard Mountain creek gold mine was rough but it was rougher then I had thought. The people were ok but the gold wasn't ok. We sluiced the 1st day and thought we were gonna have a decent clean out the first day because of the gold that we were seeing in the black mat. We ended up with not a whole lot from 7 hours of straight feeding the sluice little by little cause the current was pretty slow even w/ a damn. We have to see what a snuffer bottle looks like when we get a chance in the next few days. We got about a dozen pickers (one w/ mercury on it are biggest nug) in our jars but there pretty small(hard to get w/ tweezers). The cabin we rented had 3 dead mice in the trash can w/ a little liquid that smelled terrible. Thank god we had car air freshners for the smell. The lighting sucked in the cabin and the heat was ok but took awhile to heat the cabin up. The fridge was a night mare would never even think of storing anything in there. We are trying to get ahold of thermal city for next weeks trip on the way home. Oh yea, we ran the highbanker for our first time to get more gold and ran 5 decent size back hoe loads. We expected to find 10 times as much gold as sluicing since we ran atleast ten times the amount of dirt w/ the high banker but only found maybe twice as much as sluicing the day before. The dirt must have been real $hitty compared to what we sluiced they dug the dirt out of the creek when we used the highbanker and were not sure where the dirt came from that we sluiced. What are you guys thoughts on Thermal city gold mine? Is their native gold there or does the dirt you process there get dropped off? I appreciate any opinions or reviews I receive. Jeremy

 

[63bkpkr]

Looking for the Yellow Metal

Jeremy,
Welcome to Tnet & Prospecting & getting "out there" & sometimes finding something & enjoying being out there & working ones back side off & still be willing to go back and do it again. Was the fishing any better?

The cabin adventure sounds like a place to not go back to. I prefer backpacking into the hills but then I'm spoiled as I'm in Norther California (NorCal) and 175 miles from the mother load area. Usually I drop down some river canyon wall for a two week stay so the packs in are unfortunately heavier than the pack coming out. But I love it in there so I'd go anyway!

There's plenty of information on the internet about how to read a river. The simple form of that is to look on the downriver side of any obstruction. Obstruction would be a boulder, a bunch of boulders, a bigger bunch of boulders or even small boulder out in the dry summer river bed, a tree or any thing that would cause the force of the water to slow, allowing any heavies to drop out before the main water continued down stream. Usually there also has to be some reason for 'the heavies' to stay there like they are large enough to resist the tug of the water after the heavy has dropped behind the obstruction, or there are other rocks there to help lower the force of the water. The nature of heavies dropping is capricious likely as the water has all sorts of currents going through it that just throw things all over while under the surface. And that's where the larger or slightly heavier items will be while things that will capture a tiny air bubble will be on top of sand bars or just under the surface of a sand bar. Getting out and testing a river bank is what has been going on for a long time as it is how 'a spot' is located by panning samples.

Now taking out about a 1/4 oz of gold from 'a spot' is not that much, it only fills about a fifth of a Small sample bottle but darn it is heavy for such a small amount. The work that went into retrieving that ~1/4 oz of gold was significant but the adventure was worth it!!! I mean Worth IT! I learned so much from panning, sluicing, moving large boulders with a lever bar, metal detecting piles of samples before putting any additional effort into them and then of course there were the evening camp fire's after getting the days activities cleaned off of me. The 49ers had better gold but they had way worse conditions with miners Everywhere! Me, I'm mostly by myself out there and save for the river gurgles 24/7, a bird call, a boulder rolling over and the wind there are not that many disturbances. After the two weeks I go back to the city and understand why I like it 'out there' so much.

So if you choose, keep at it, as someday you will find a paystreak and you will smile so big your face might just start to crack.
Oh, don't forget to have some fun while you are out there!......................63bkpkr

The river flows from the right of the picture to the left of the picture or the crack in the boulder is on the down river side of the large boulder. Sample behind the boulder and up the bank behind the boulder.

While sampling you will meet a great number of the friends of the large boulder that have dropped behind the main 'obstruction'.

These are some of the things that can be found behind obstructions to the rivers flow: bullets, magnetite, lead shot, and when the sun shines on you "kindly" some gold pickers. The dime is there only for scale of size.
If you are really having fun beating yourself up a person can dig quite a bit.

But just like in the city, please fill your holes/dig site after your are done. Then again, think about all those rocks filling the trench on the down river side of the large boulder, they form a new catchment system for years to come. And yes, this is one of the two places I mentioned in the note above.

But don't forget about the relaxing in front of the campfire after getting clean and having a helping of some well deserved food. (note the buckets in the background, its the paystreak)

This is what ~ a 1/4 oz of raw gold looks like on top of a U.S. Half Dollar