Hi there Dogbeak, I am into gold dredging and prospecting myself.
Here is a website that lists known gold locations in your state. As with any website, the information provided is not limited to what is published. If the website doesn't list your county, it doesn't mean there is no gold to be found. Recently in Atlanta, Georgia there was a nice exposed vein of gold found in the southern end of the city, despite it being common knowledge that the gold belt does not travel that far south, but yet, there it was, all bright and shiny and unnoticed throughout the entire history of Atlanta until recently. So there is high probably that there is gold in the area you are talking about. The gold in the cheese state is very fine, but that just means there is a lot more of that type of gold than most other areas. The second piece of good news is that the finer gold does not settle as deep in the stream bed material, therefore, you don't have to dig as deep to get to it. Although, it takes a lot of work to move alot of material to see just a little bit of gold in the pan. The trick to getting a nice size-able amount is to move a lot of material efficiently. Be forewarned, once you find gold in your pan...... YOU WILL BECOME ADDICTED to it. It's gold fever, and the only way to alleviate the symptoms is to go out and find more gold. No one who has ever picked up a gold pan and found color has ever been able to walk away content. All of us gold hunters all went into this thinking, "eh, it will be fun, I think this will be a nice way to spend a day or two". Then the flash of gold shows up in the pan for the first time, and that's when you contract the fever, and it is incurable.
http://www.uwex.edu/wgnhs/Mineral Index/Minerals/gold.htm
Now, along with gold fever and the quest for gold comes the "must" have mentality. This means in order to make your quest for gold easier, you'll have this twisted-arm feeling of having to go get better equipment, because hunting with nothing but a shovel and a pan gets old, really quick, it's too back-breaking and slow for most. So allow me to save you a lot of money and suggest some really good and inexpensive equipment that I did not know about until after I spent a ton of cash on inferior items that cost me 3 times more to buy.....
The area layout you are describing is perfect for a "Gold-N-Sand" hand dredge, which is nothing more than a PVC pipe sniping tube, but with an elbow attached with an 8 foot hose running to a bucket which makes for gathering up the material very quick and with a lot less effort than using a shovel. This tool will also get you in some very tight and unseen areas that will have a lot of trapped gold that the average person is not able to get to. These hand dredges are nearly effortless and easy to use and man, you can get in some very tight places with these things, they also have interchangeable tips for getting into different types of areas. This tool is also great for those pesky national forest places that have the ever-so-stupid "you can pan, but no digging allowed" areas. The hand dredge currently has no law anywhere against it because it is not motorized, and it is impossible to do any erosion damage with it, so this thing will get you in anywhere and be legal at the same time. I own one and I love the fact that I can sample and pan anywhere and to be able to legally thumb my nose at any person or authority that may not like the idea of me pulling precious metal out of the river, they just simply cannot use any environmental "concerns" against it, it's like saying that I may redirect an entire river using a teaspoon...... an utterly ridiculous argument!
http://gold-n-sand.com/#/sniper-pump/4536593371
The second thing you will need is a sluice, and this is where I spent a lot of money buying and trying different sluices, and the one that works the absolutely best is the one I spent the least amount of money on.... go figure!
The best sluice by far is the Le' Trap Sluice, technically called the Le' Trap Bank Robber. These sluices don't use riffles to capture the gold, the use deep slanted grooves that make a slight incline along the sluice which in turn, makes the heaviest material run out of momentum and it falls out of the current and gets stuck in the groves. What is neat about this sluice is that it will remove 98% of the blond sand and lighter black sand right out of your material and it leaves just the heaviest black sands and your gold. So, this will completely eliminate most of the panning that you have to do to get to the gold, all you need to do from there, is to now take your black sand concentrate and drop one table spoon of the sand into your pan, swirl it and shake it around to get the gold to settle, and start slowly swirling the sands away from the pile that is in the pan to uncover the gold. With this neat sluice, you no longer have to do anymore of the swishing and washing of material out of the pan to get to the good stuff, it has already been done for you. It has turned a 5 gallon bucket of concentrates and turned them into less than a quart of material to pan through, it usually takes me about an hour to go through all the sand and remove the gold. Another neat thing is that you will actually see your gold show up in the sluice immediately after you drop the sand in it, the gold just sits in the grooves and does a little dance for you. Lastly, this sluice will not lose any gold, I use the Le' Trap inside the sluice of my dredge at the end of the day to process my concentrates. I just lift up the riffles, remove my carpet, and set the Le' Trap inside and weigh it down with a rock, I then set my dredge on idle and let the water flow through it, then I just start dropping the sand into it. I can process 5 gallon buckets in less than 10 minutes and that's taking my sweet time while I talk to other dredgers and smoke a cigarette. Most other sluices are finicky about the amount of angle/water flow that they will take to process efficiently, but not the Le' Trap, it likes a lot of water and it will work perfectly if it sits dead even or if you have it on a steeper than usual angle. This sluice is very versatile and forgiving, so you are not so pressured into having to find that "perfect spot" that will allow you to operate your sluice. Trust me, I have wasted countless hours trying to adjust sluice pitch and water flow using rocks around it and underneath it, and trying to do so in both very shallow water, and at times having no other place but to try and set it up in an area that is 1 or two feet deep (NOT FUN!)
So far, I have yet to lose any gold using this sluice, I have caught and panned out my own tailings that have ran out of this sluice and I have yet to recover even a speck of gold dust that may have escaped from it. This sluice is as efficient as you can get and it's made out of high impact ABS plastic, it's very rugged, tough, durable and easy to fix it yourself should it ever get cracked (very hard to do in the first place). The total cost is 89.95!
http://gotnuggets.com/letrapsluice.html
As mentioned by another poster, black sands is a very good sign that you are looking for because gold and black sand erode out of the rocks and settle with each other in the river, however, not all rivers with black sand have gold, and not all gold bearing rivers have black sand, it is merely a guide when looking for gold, not a promise that gold is there. I have a friend who owns a "gem grubbing" mine/shop here in North Carolina where people go to sift through dirt in the water to recover rubies and sapphires, his creek has no black sands in it at all, but he has recently found gold showing up in his water trough from the sands people are washing away to get to the gems. As the old saying goes, "gold is where you find it" and it will show up in the oddest of places that you would never think of gold being. Gold could very well be in that 2 foot wide babbling brook in your own back yard!
Feel free to ask any other questions, I will be more than happy to get you on the right track and quickly. You're going to have a blast with it.
