How wide is your typical flood gold pay streak?

[Capricorn]

I'm guessing they are all different.. I've mostly worked the same spot (3 trips there now I think). It's a gravel bar in the Bohemia mining district. When I first got to the the spot, I saw that someone had already dug 2 holes. One is in the middle of the bar, one on the outer edge. The one in the middle had more color, so I've just been working that hole. I dug a few buckets, one inline with the hole and the center of the bar, and one going deeper. The hole is maybe 2 feet wide at this point. The most color was in the bucket in line with the hole, going deeper had some color, but not as much. Then I got an AM Explorer sluice box. I set up the sluice and dug out a bucket. Because of a large plant, and a boulder pile, I couldn't keep digging in line with the middle of the bar, so I started going sideways from the hole. I ran a bucket of that through the sluice, and found only a few specs. This surprised me, because I had found a lot more when I panned the other material. So I dug a few more buckets from that side, and brought them home to pan instead of sluice. I've now panned out one, and found it has significantly fewer colors then my first original bucket. But I did find 2 or 3 decent flakes, and a half dozen or more smaller colors. I didn't find any flakes in the material I ran through the sluice. So I'm thinking I didn't have the sluice setup right, and was losing some material. I'm hoping to get it setup to recirc at home, so I can fine tune it to get a feel for how I need to run it to not lose material. But, I was surprised to find that their was such a difference in gold content as I started to move out to the side on the gravel bar. Is the pay streak just typically concentrated in a narrow region (say 8" to a foot and a half)? How wide are pay streaks that you have identified? I had assumed that I would still find gold in the whole bar, just as I went further away from the pay streak it would gradually taper off. What I seem to be seeing is that once I'm a foot away from the pay streak, there is practically no gold. Just wondering how typical that is..

 

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[SLNugget]

The article in this link probably does not completely answer your question, but it is very interesting reading about "skim bars" on the Snake River.
Although this article was written specifically about the Snake I am sure some of the info can be applied to other rivers and streams.

 

[DizzyDigger]

Capricorn, welcome to the confusing world of prospecting..

Flood gold is my primary target up here in the far NW, and yes, it will
form into a paystreak. Width of that paystreak will depend largely
on how the river currents that formed the paystreak were moving.
12" - 24" would be about the average I've seen, but some are narrower
and others a bit wider (not much though).

Best way you can understand this (and increase your gold finding)
would be to locate a few bridges over creeks or rivers, and when the
water is clear go stand on the bridge, looking down on the flowing
waters below. You can also walk down a creek flowing fairly clear,
and, watching downstream, drop a big handful of mud at your feet
and watch how the currents carry the material down across a bar.

Another method is to stand on that bridge and look down on a
decent sized boulder (3' - ?) and notice how the current moves
around that boulder and creates a back-eddy behind it. That
back-eddy may be narrow or wide depending on the boulder, and
it can extend several feet (or more) out behind that boulder. What
you may notice is that the "sweet spot" where most material is
dropping out might be as far as 2' behind that boulder, with smaller
material deposited even further back. At some point the downstream
currents "reconnect", and that would be the tailout (end) of that
particular area.

You can learn an awful lot by just relaxing and watching the currents
move the sand around in a creek/river, as noticing where it deposits
material will save you hours of searching later.

Hope all that wasn't too cryptic...just woke up so the brain isn't
fully engaged yet..