How many hours at the beach per GOOD jewelry find do you hunt

[The-Bone]

Just curious..about how much time per good jewelry find do you guesstimate that you put in detecting at the beach/in water?

 

[seas1to2]

it varies a lot. I have had some days I was at the beach an within 20 min's had 2 gold rings, 1 day I got to the beach turned on the machine an the very first hit was a 10k, others days would take 10 hours of swing before I got a nice find.I go to the beach 1 time at week an so far I have brought home gold or silver every trip but 4 times this year,I hunt both beach an water.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

It varies greatly for me, appears seas1to2 is having better luck then I am. Sometimes I will find gold right away, sometime late in hunt, many times not at all, and one time I found diamond ring the last 5 secs of my hunt as I was litterly 4 feet from leaving beach and hitting wooden walk when i found it.

For me, a bad day hunting sure beats the heck out of a good day at work. I enjoy the beach, the sounds of the surf, the air, and the eye candy.

I have days with no gold, but I have never had a single day with no eye candy!

 

[DaChief]

For me in my rookie year this year beach hunting, it seems that I do well early and then fade like a burning candle. I have attributed this in many of my posts here to fatigue as the day goes on. My theory is that I pay attention to what I am doing more when I am fresh and then as I get tired, I start getting sloppy, etc. Thus more finds early, less finds after I hunt for a while and get tired.

In relation to junk vs. goodies, I would say that on a very good day, I recover at least 20 junk items, counting clad coins as junk, per every good item which I consider good items to be something of silver, gold or other precious metal. Doesn't sound so bad till you think that for every 2 rings I find, I dig 40 stinking holes for something else that is not much good to me.

Compare these findings with what I do relic hunting and I get about the same results though. I find lots of junk in the woods for every goody also.

All in all, there are probably going to be days that you can hunt and hit a gold mine of treasure and days when you will curse the treasure gods also. Average days are more like mine described above though so I consider any day with one nice find a great day, any day with no finds a good day because I am doing something I love to do and any day with lots of goodies a freakin miracle.

Good luck,

DaChief!

 

[Jason in TN]

I would say 1 gold for every 5hrs on average for me.

 

[Murph]

Depends on time of year. My hunts average three hours on southwest FL beaches. During summer months every other hunt would generally produced something of precious metal value.

I naively was looking forward to cooler weather but have come to realize this is not a good thing. No one in the water. Greatly reduced use of oily sun blocks. Traffic reduced to mainly those walking or jogging the beach. This has cut my finds in half per hour.

Absent any erosion event the wet sand has become devoid of value targets. This has sent me into the dry where even there a highly anal grid pattern approach is necessary and I cover only a 50 by 100 yard area overlapping both directions to pick off recent blanket drops or long lost deep targets out of range of most lower end machines or those employing poor technique (about 90 percent of other MDers I see)

I am now looking forward to spring break.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

targets out of range of most lower end machines or those employing poor technique (about 90 percent of other MDers I see)

I am now looking forward to spring break.

I love it when I see my competition speed walking down the beach swinging their detectors in almost a 90 degree ARC.

Murf, you thought any about attending the "Great Southern Beach Shootout" at Daytona Beach in April of 2008?

Now that we are past the hurricane season, waiting on a good Nor-Eastern and spring myself. The subtropical storm that hit the east coast Daytona Beach area late spring was great, we were finding gold everywhere in the water in huge holes in the surf. I personally saw 15 gold rings come out of one hole, on one low tide one day.

 

[The-Bone]

thanks for the replies...does anyone hunt freshwater and if so is the time different than on the salt water?

 

[SilverSleuth]

I've found 1 gold ring in probably 30-40 or more hours of hunting. I hope it improves.

 

[makahaman]

Once I found about 20 gold rings in the matter of a few hours! This only happends a few times in ones lifetime! The whole beach was gone and the only thing that was left was the sand stone, rings and things was just laying around waiting for me to pick up off the bottom! I was diving of course, but I think that if you can read and understand your beach the better the chances of you finding the good stuff! So, read and understand your beach,learn it, watch it and live it and I promise you will find more gold! Hope this helps!!!!

 

[Sandman]

For me, a bad day hunting sure beats the heck out of a good day at work. I enjoy the beach, the sounds of the surf, the air, and the eye candy.

I have days with no gold, but I have never had a single day with no eye candy!

I'm with you Treasure Hunter. One of my best rings came from after just turning on my detector and moved the coil over to grap my scoop. Beep, I was standing in ankel deep water and took it out in first small scoop. You never know when or how often you'll find stuff. One thing is a Golden Law, "The more you hunt, the more you find."

 

[Highwater]

The-Bone asked about salt vs fresh water time spent.
I only have fresh water experience on the west coast and salt water hunting on both coast. From my fresh water experience, unless a place has been worked and cleaned prior, I found that the fresh water hunting in a lot of places can be a hard effort. You have to work at clearing out a lot of 'junk' to find some goodies. (tree limbs, cans, pull tabs, ect) Once you have pretty well hunted it to death, usually for a few decent pieces, then you have to wait for the next year for it to be replenished by the crowd. Once it's gone, it's gone for the season. Of course, I wasn't in a real warm sunny swimming kind of place all the time being along the northwest coastal areas, so most places were somewhat primitive and were tough to hunt. I had it much easier when hunting more populated areas inland and the time/junk/ticket ratio was much better. I did very well inland where there was more sun and a lot bigger population, but there was usually still plenty of junk to deal with as well as competition with other hunters and it was up and down the scale. The best I did for a while was getting under the water with a friend of mine. I lucked out when he showed me the results he was getting from his shallow water diving and it wasn't hard to talk me into being his dive partner. Still had a lot of junk, but not as much competition in the deeper water. Too bad I had to move to the coast because things were really getting interesting and we were loading up on some nice stuff.
With ocean beach hunting, things can change daily. As long as there is any kind of wind or tidal action in your favor you can always find targets. The ocean is like a big giant gold pan, separating the light stuff from the heavy stuff. Where as you can hunt out a fresh water area that has no tidal action to sort and separate the light from the heavy and replenish it'self, and once the place has been hunted out then you have to move on to other places and wait until next year to hunt that spot again. Overall, fresh water time/junk/ticket ratio didn't average out as well for me as do salt water beaches in the shallow water. Maybe it really depends where you are, how sunny, how big of crowd and what the competition is like.
I like the salt water beach hunting better as it seems to me to be less work per prize and it is constantly replenishing it'self even when there isn't a crowd. It is a pleasant place to play.

 

[The-Bone]

thanks highwater...nice info!