Yeah, that happened to me yesterday. After hunting in the water at Clearwater Beach for 30 minutes and getting zero signals, I had to check my detector against my scoop to make sure it was working. I finally gave up and went to the surf/wet sand. No luck there, either. 42 beach trips now; zero gold, 1 silver trinket. If it's this bad right at the end of the busy season, what's it gonna be like in the cold months?
Hunting during the cold months may surprise you. Of course, your "colder" months in FL are a lot different that my colder months in MD & DE, so your mileage may vary. But here's a few of my reasons why I love beach hunting my area in the Fall & Winter:
1. None, or very reduced competition. Lots of competition you saw during summer may have been there because they were on vacation, but now they're gone. Locals may or may not want to be out hunting in the cold, but as it's been said, "fortune favors the bold". The vast majority of times I was the only guy detecting, the only other people I saw would be walking their dog or taking a stroll looking for seashells. It's very quiet and tranquil hunting when there's nobody else around. And when it's quiet, you can hear a lot more than you could during summer.
2. Less trash. Sure, there's still gonna be some trash, but with the crowds of people who were dropping trash daily during the summer now gone, there will be a lot less trash to deal with. And every piece of trash you take with you is one less piece you'll find tomorrow. Plus, a lot of the competition will have found & removed trash as well. But in colder months, we no longer think recent drops, we're now thinking DEEP.
3. Winter Storms! Yeah buddy, Fall & Winter is when we get Hurricanes, Nor'easters, strong winds & other types of storms. A beach can never be "worked out", because it changes constantly. Cheddar that's been buried further out under water can be thrown up onto the dry or wet with the next storm. Cheddar that's been hiding deep in the dry can now be within range when a storm strips off a couple feet of sand. Cuts, bowls, and troughs form, and they're always the first areas I search. BTW, Terry Shannon, who hunts FL's treasure coast, mentioned that at one bowl he hunted, he pulled 12 rings, and 5 were gold, all from that one bowl. Just saying...
4. Fall/Winter is the time to go as deep as possible, i.e., crank up your detectors sensitivity as high as you can while retaining some stability when working the dry, work in all metal, pick a section of the beach and work it in a grid, hitting every square inch of sand by searching methodically and making sure you overlap every sweep. When you're done, search it again in a 90-degree direction. So, if you started the grid working W to E, then grid again working N to S. Listen for faint whisper tones that indicate deeper targets. Most guys walked over these during summer. They may have been out of range of their detector, but more than likely, they just didn't hear them due to all the beach noise you hear during summer. But in Fall/Winter, less or no other people means that you'll be able to hear a lot more than you could during the summer.
5, PI time. I recently acquired my first PI after 56 years, and Fall/Winter is exactly the time I want to take my PI to the beach to hit the dry, and of course, the wet & shallow water. But during summer, running a PI in the dry would cause a guy to lose his mind with all the trash. But in colder months, with no trash being deposited every day, I'll be cranking up my PI's sensitivity as high as I can while remaining fairly stable and hitting the dry, listening for those faint whisper tones that indicate very deep targets. Those still may be trash. But they may also be cheddar that's buried so deep that nobody else was able to detect.
There's probably more reasons, others may chime in with theirs, but there's a LOT of benefits to hunting the beach during the colder months.
