I know this probably isn't going to be much as far as "words of wisdom" go, but I'm going to give it a shot anyways:
1) #1 thing is don't get discouraged when you're just starting! When you come on this site and see all these people posting these wonderful finds, try to remember that the vast majority are coming from folks who have put in 100's of hours refining their techniques, learning how their detectors work and learning where the better finds can come from. It honestly will happen for you too - just keep practicing and try not to get discouraged - take away something positive from each hunt - even if it's just learning something NOT to do!
2) Beaches in my personal opinion are a very good place to get started learning your detector - mostly because it's very easy to dig. I have no idea what your detector is or whether you are hunting in water, on land, salt water etc... - I'd say you're doing the right thing by trying to find a beach (or what used to be a beach years ago). Odds are there will be less trash, but that's not a given.
3) One thing you could do (depending on your detector) is start by using a decent amount of descrimination if you can. This should get rid of alot of the garbage you find and although you might very well miss the gold, you'll still pick up silver and coins. It's kind of like taking baby steps - give yourself a chance to find worthwhile things until you get the hang of how your detector acts on them, and then start backing off on the descrimination and turning up the sensitivity and just go back over your areas again - it won't take long before you're very good with your detector and will have a much better idea of how to adjust it to get you what you want.
4) If you are planning on diving with your detector, it's obviously waterproof, so there should be nothing stopping you from getting out in the water at least up to your knees or waist. Not as many folks detect out that far unless they too have waterproof detectors and your odds should increase in finding more useful things. Unless you are using descrimination, you'll still find garbage, but it's a good step in learning as well.
Like I said - I know these aren't words of wisdom, but I did most of these things (or learned that I should have) this past spring when I got back into the hobby and started using a water detector for the first time. I guarantee you I learn something new every single time I go out still, but at least the initial sharp learning curve has leveled off some.
It just takes some time and practice - just like anything else
Good luck and I look forward to seeing some of your finds!
Oh and one more last thing - once you've hunted with some descrimination enough to know you CAN find things, you'll want to go with the least possible descrimination and the highest sensitivity you can stand and you'll want to move slow and close to the ground and you'll find that you missed alot of the really good stuff earlier on when practicing
. If you can put up with digging 100 junk things for every 1 good thing, you can go with the lack of descrimination right off the bat, but I know for myself as a newbie I found myself getting discouraged too quickly doing that. Now that I know I can find those good things, I can handle doing all the extra digging - I don't mind it and you won't either!
