What Northern California beaches should I detect? Arcata to the Oregon Border.

[NeoTokyo]

Heya everyone;

This is on very short notice but I am leaving later today (Monday) for beach hopping and camping adventures.
I will be camping at Patrick's Point and maybe Clam Beach, I plan to be there until Thursday.

I am taking 299 from Redding out, so also any nice places to detect along the way would be greatly appreciated.

I already have plans to detect Clam beach and have not seen anything online about no detecting, and I would love to detect Agate Beach at Patrick's Point but if any I would assume this one would be closed to detecting because of the park.

Thanks for your help everyone, and if you post after I leave today that is ok because I will have a Tablet with me so that I can check in here.



The Detector that I will be using is the Nokta FORS Gold.


-Eric-

 

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[T.C.]

Good luck to ya and break a leg!! Not literally, just figuratively!!

 

[cudamark]

Not the best beach machine. It should operate fine in the dry sand, however, it's going to sound off on every little scrap of foil and other junk. It will probably be pretty unstable in the wet or water. Being only a single freq. VLF it will probably false like crazy unless you can detune it enough to compensate. You'll lose depth doing that though. Hit any beach that gets lots of swimmers. From the mean high tide down to the water is open to the public everywhere in Ca. except for military bases. If you can get on to the base, you can even hunt there for the most part. Now there can be restrictions in certain areas, such as wildlife preserves or national seashores. Do a bit of research online to check their regulations on that particular section of beach. You can always ask us too! For what that may be worth.........

 

[NeoTokyo]

Thanks for the info guys.
The most info that I found said not to disturb plants, animals, structures or historical items.
If something over $100 is found it must be handed over for 30 days in their lost and found and then if no one claims it I can keep it.

I didn't know about the high and low tide rule, I will stick there.

The FORS Gold CAN be adjusted to work the wet, but like you said you lose some depth and you also tune out gold items.
The FORS CoRe is much better suited to working wet salty beaches as it has a setting just for this.

These are essentially the same machine, but the Gold lacks the beach setting and there are a couple other small differences like tone.

I will be working the dry part of the beach myself, coin spills here I come.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Thanks for the info guys.
The most info that I found said not to disturb plants, animals, structures or historical items.
If something over $100 is found it must be handed over for 30 days in their lost and found and then if no one claims it I can keep it....

Neo-tokyo, I had to chuckle when I read this. You're quoting, verbatim, from the FMDAC state parks rules. And technically speaking, yes: the state beaches here in CA are administered by the CA state parks dept, just like their inland parks. So technically, there's no reason why whatever rules apply to their land parks (forests, campgrounds, lakes, etc...) wouldn't equally apply to along the ocean coast beaches they administer.

But let me tell you the *realistic* side of it here. You can md state of CA beaches till you're blue in the face. And if you (gasp) find a historic (defined as 50 or 100+ yrs. old?) coin, no one cares, no one turns them in. No one re-inserts them back into the ground so as not to have "disturbed" them .

 

[Tom_in_CA]

And as for the items of $100 value or more, all that is doing is merely parroting the state's lost & found laws (regardless of whether found in state parks, or on the street, etc...). Those laws date back to wandering cattle laws of the 1800s. But seriously now, take a long look at the beach hunting forum, where md'rs routinely roll out their show & tell latest beach jewelry finds. How many of those guys do you think are running down to the police station to turn in each ring they find ? You are welcome to do so, if you want, but ........ realistically, such laws were so that no numbskull "finds" a mountain bike parked outside a 7-11 and think he can keep it. Or when a brinks armored car door swings open on the freeway, bundles of cash aren't yours to keep when you "find" them, etc.... But *realistically* when it comes to md'ing fumble fingers stuff like we do (which could have been lost years ago): no, no one is running to the police station.

That's the weakness of the FMDAC's attempt to compile that list of theirs. It was a noble effort, and seemingly logical to write 50 inquiries to all 50 state's parks depts, asking: "What are the rules/laws concerning md'ing in your state run parks?". Then some pencil pusher desk-bound bureaucrat passes this "pressing question" to legal counsel, etc... And presto, you get all sorts of genius technical answers. Kind of like asking "Can I spit on the sidewalk in New York" kind of question.

 

[NeoTokyo]

Thanks for all the great info everyone.

I ended up detecting for a while on the beach in Trinidad, I found lots of lost change and bottle caps, but that's it.
That beach has been very well combed and an older man showed up with his Bounty Hunter and was cleaning up pretty well too, he was also using headphones, a real must out there!

We stayed for a few nights at Patrick's Point and were told that detecting was not allowed on Agate Beach BUT she didn't know 100% because that is what one of the rangers told her and she never saw it in writing.
I packed my detector down onto Agate Beach but ended up building Castles with the girls, hunting for agates and falling asleep using my Nokta backpack as a pillow.

Back to Trinidad Beach.
The vibration mode of the FORS Gold really made a big difference because I would feel it if my headphones didn't pick up the sound.

I was able to hunt right to the surf line without any major problems.
Yes, there was falsing and chatter, but nothing that couldn't be easily ignored.
Of course, in the surf it just wont work unless you discriminate way up.

Overall I was very happy with the performance of the FORS Gold at the beach.
I used the 11.2" medium coil as it is my favorite general purpose coil.

My reasoning for not using the larger coil was to keep from getting down too deep into the salty layer of wet sand.

All in all the Nokta FORS Gold continues to amaze me in its ease of use and abilities, truly a wonderful machine leaving me with no regrets of not keeping my Fisher Gold Bug Pro and Gold Bug 2.

 

[Oregon Viking]

Glad you had fun! Did you eat at that ....almost on the docks...restaurant in Trinidad? it used to be gooooood!!

 

[NeoTokyo]

Naw, we didn't eat out, we cooked everything on the fire.

Next time I will for sure.

 

[cudamark]

Interesting, that would be the reason I WOULDN'T want to use a detector like that. I WANT stability and depth from my beach machine. An Ace 150 will find surface coins.

 

[NeoTokyo]

The deepest target that I found was at about 10-12" down, it was a 1995 Penny that was badly corroded.
Half of my targets were at about 7" of depth.

I would say that's pretty decent depth for the conditions.