ArizonaGoldFever said:
Nice find! I went out a few times in Llano when I lived in Austin. Never did find much, just a few specks of color. Looks like you've found a good spot!
You got to look in all the crevises where gold will get trapped, under front and back of boulders in the river or in flood stage areas, plant roots, (yes, you have to dig them up and go as deep as you can, especially if they are in the middle of the river, Llano River has tons of little islands), whirlpool holes, etc. The gold coming into the Llano River is washing out from the mountains and going into the river. I dug a nice little flake about the size of a pin head but flat out of some dirt I dug from the creek bank about 6 feet above the creek. Most people only go where it is easier for them. Most won't truck through the river, especially walking in or across waist or chest deep water, or walk up a river several hundreds of feet from land to find a good spot, but gold is in there trust me.
There was another prospector there and he was digging under a boulder, (it had a crevise opening and a catfish darted out from under it when he was pulling out rocks), in the river and found a bunch of gold flakes and some specs in the black sand. After showing off his finds in his pan it was getting dark and he was putting some of his stuff in a blue bowl and he was talking to someone and he pointed, somewhere and unluckily about that time he dropped his hand his finger bumped the pan and flipped it off the table and out went the gold! He scraped up as much dirt he could but didn't find most of his gold.
I am NEW to prospecting, I know NOT to leave your flakes in a pan much less try and clean out your concentrates at dark outside.
That was the main reason I bagged up my dirt, sand, and etc in a ziplock bag because even though it was daylight I wasn't going to lose anything much less my gold in the river! What little gold I found prior went into a separate bottle locked up and sealed, especially some of the flakes!
