One thing that's critical, and it's been briefly mentioned, but it's absolutely critical to finding gold in the type of ground that gold is usually found in, when using a dedicated gold machine, is to always ensure that the machine is properly ground balanced. I'll repeat that again--always ensure that the machine is properly ground balanced.
I know a guy that's a big-time pro that started chasing the gold in the 70's. He's found pounds and pounds of gold nuggets, and lots of the nuggets he finds are small ones too (he's got some beautiful big gold as well). However, he said the first while that he spent looking for nuggets (and he was hunting in excellent gold country on large sheets of exposed bedrock, hand-mined by the Oldtimers--he was definitely in the right location to find gold), all he dug were bits of lead, can-slaw, tiny pieces of wire, birdshot,nails and hotrocks. He couldn't figure out what was wrong with his detector. He hunted with other guys using the same detector and they were getting great gold and all he got was trash. He almost gave up, almost. . . .
Then one day, a guy was detecting in the same area and he had a nice poke of nuggets from the same sheets of bedrock that my friend had got skunked on! Well, my buddy asked the fellow that was cleaning up on the nuggets, that was using the exact same machine my buddy was using, what his secret was. This other guy was kind enough to ask my friend to show him how he hunted. So, my buddy did. The other guy stopped him after a few minutes and knew exactly what was wrong.
He asked how my friend ground balanced his machine, and when he ground balanced it. Well, to make the story short, he showed my friend the absolute necessity of ground balancing that machine properly and often--properly and often--my friend wasn't doing it often enough, nor had he put in the time to learn when and where to do it often enough.
Why was he was uninformed of those facts? Well, in gold country the mineralization can change extremely rapidly, and vary dramatically often within several feet of exposed bedrock, sometimes in half a foot! So, the long and short of the story is that my friend got super serious about learning how to have his machine always properly ground balanced. He slowed way down (many, many people make the mistake of going way too fast), took the time to learn how to do it meticulously, and guess what? He started hitting the nuggets and he hasn't looked back since.
Whenever anyone asks him the secret to his success, he always tells that story. Some people listen, and a lot of others just rush out there, and they try to cover as much ground as possible in the shortest amount of time, and they go home empty-handed. The ones that listen, and take the time to know their machines, learn. The ones that don't get beat by the mineralization and give up.
A bunch of great guys have given you excellent advice so far on a lot of important aspects of nugget shooting, and with their tips you can go a long, long way as long as you've got that machine properly ground balanced. And, as long as you've got a dedicated gold machine with the circuitry to do the job. If not, you'll just keep digging trash--the machine has to be balanced against the mineralization in the ground to see the gold--the trash just has a way of always screaming louder, while the gold stays happily hidden exactly in the same ground.
All the best,
Lanny
