Welcome Niki. You will find more of everything in the dry sand, except jewelry that is. Mostly Coins, trash and toys. Jewelry is lost in the dry sand occasionally but mostly in the water. You need to think about how things get lost, fall out of pockets, put on the towel so you don't loose it in the water and then someone picks up the towel, a thunderstorm comes up and everyone scrambles to get off the beach, someone throwing a ball with slippery hands, horseplay in the water, little toddler pulling on mommy or daddy's ring finger, that kind of stuff. Then think about where those things take place and hunt there. For the dry sand, the best time of day is in the late afternoon or evening when you can see the beach nests where people had their chair or blanket. I will give you one day at the beach with a garden trowel before you say, "I'm getting a decent scoop, NOW". The easier it is to scoop and quickly recover your target, the quicker you get on to the next target. The gold ring is ALWAYS the target you didn't have time to get to and someone else finds it. I started with a hand held dry sand scoop and it worked well in the dry sand, daaaaa. Wet sand was too hard to dig in (blisters the first day) and the sand would not sift through the holes unless I carried it to the water and sloshed it. From that I graduated to a long handled shovel for the wet sand with my dry sand scoop hooked over the top of the handle. Drag it behind me to show where I hunted so I don't hunt the same area twice. Dig it up easily in the wet sand and move the pile around with your foot to find the target. Pretty simple, and sand doesn't seem to stick to the gold so it shows up pretty quickly. I still dragged the shovel in the dry sand and used the dry sand scoop. That combination worked pretty well for wet and dry sand. However, in the water you NEED a long handled scoop, the bigger the better if you are dealing with wave action. You want to get the target the first time if you can, before the wave comes and knocks you away from your target. I now use my long handles SS scoop for everything on the beach or in the water. Works great. I wear water shoes and gloves.
