I'm back, really tired and sore but I'll be working on a write up of the trip. Our hotel had free parking, restaurant that served incredible food, indoor pool, easy beach access, and I checked with one of the lady's there, and every room of the hotel is waterfront, each with balconies facing the beach & ocean.
Well, I’m back from my trip to OC, my 5th trip out with my Dual Field PI “FrankenDuFi” and I’m really sore and tired. Weds was a busy day, with running around to pack, load the truck, make a few stops, drive for 3 hours to get to the hotel, then check in, make several trips from the truck up to the room, then throw on my too small waders and get everything ready to hit the beach. When I got back to the room Weds night, I was sore and tired. But when I got back to the hotel after hunting over 4 hours on Thursday, I could barely move. During Thursdays hunt, my lower lumbar was literally on fire, and I tried standing straight, tried leaning back a bit, but nothing eased that lumbar pain, so I just fought through it and figured I’d pay the price later and I did have a tube of Icy Hot with me, lol. Yeah, now I’m paying that price. Who knew that spending over 6 years working from home and sitting at my PC for 12 hours every day and getting older would take such a toll when hunting in an angry ocean, lol.
I keep forgetting that there's a huge gap between what the mind thinks and what the body thinks when you get older, and spend all day & night at your PC, then think you're gonna go hit our angry Atlantic Ocean beaches without any problems, a rude awakening is just waiting in the wings. As a fairly famous local OC beach/water hunter told me when I was fortunate to speak with him before we left for the trip, OC beaches/ocean are the Major Leagues of water hunting. I kinda knew that from my experience hunting DE beaches, but the beaches in OC kick up the challenging level a notch or two, and the ocean there seems to be a bit angrier, lol.
I’ve seen a lot of videos of guys hunting in oceans, but at some of the oceans I’ve seen them hunting in, the water looks calm & still, like they’re hunting in a pond. Our beaches in OC & DE are the exact opposite. It’s a constant struggle just to stay upright and to try to dig fast enough before incoming water fills up the hole we just dug. It’s a constant race to get to the target as fast as possible, while keeping an eye on rushing water and keeping our footing steady so we don’t get swept off our feet. This is one area where experience counts, timing the digging in between rushing water, as it’s no fun getting upended by a rogue wave or an incoming rush of water that you didn’t see coming.
Back when the wife and I had a 2nd house down near Rehoboth Beach, I spent well over 10+ years hunting beaches in DE every weekend and a week during summer, so I’m really familiar with beaches in the First State. But during those 10+ years, I probably only hit beaches in OC a few times, with the last time probably about 10 years ago when I went down to hunt while a hurricane was passing by off the coast. THAT was an experience I’ll never forget, lol.
If I had to compare DE beaches to those in OC, I’d say that OC beaches are much larger and nastier than DE beaches. It’s crazy because they’re both on the same coast and are connected, but the ocean in OC just seems to be angrier than at beaches in DE. Could also just be that I'm very familiar with beaches in DE, and I'm a newbie with hitting beaches in OC, it’s hard to explain but all I can say is that hunting OC beach waters just felt “different” and more challenging than hunting beaches in DE.
Weds 3/25/26
We got down to the hotel on Weds a little after 4pm, which was check in time. By the time I checked in, then made several trips to unload my truck and get everything up to the room, then squeezed into my totally too small waders, got all my gear, then down to the beach, I had a little over an hour to hunt as the tide was going out before it got dark.
But before heading out, I went out to the balcony to scan the beach, looking for any potential low spots.
Looking at the beach to my left, I noticed what looked like a scallop and potential sandbar. Also interesting was that on this day, the winds were coming from the North and the waves were hitting the beach from left to right.
Here’s a zoomed in version of the photo above, showing the scalloped low area where water was pooling.
You can see the low area where the water is pooling, and in-between the beach and ocean waves was a small sandbar that formed. And in front of that sandbar was a fairly narrow trough. I made a beeline for that scalloped/trough area since I only had a little over an hour to hunt before lights out.
Unfortunately, that scalloped area and the trough in between the sandbar and beach was loaded with freshly deposited large granule soft sand, meaning any potential goodies were probably too deep to detect, even with my PI. I figured I’d give it a shot anyway, but as soon as I stepped in the water, my foot started sinking in the soft sand and the water rushing from right to left in the trough was pushing on my leg fairly hard, so I stepped back out so I wouldn’t continue sinking and get upended by the rushing water.
Interesting also was that the sand on the typical wet areas was the same large granule soft sand. It’s extremely rare that I get any signals on this type of soft sand, even with my PI, as cheddar and any desirable goodies are heavy and more than likely too deep until the sand shifts and gets pulled back into the ocean. So I wound up hunting a bit higher on the “wet” than I would have preferred, and consequently, wound up getting a few light and thin iron targets.
It was hard to tell what was the wet versus what was the dry, because the beach was 1 big, flat area of packed sand. Usually, the beaches have a dry section with sugar sand, then there’s usually a slope with wet sand that goes down into water. But there wasn’t any typical sugar dry sand and there wasn’t a slope to separate the wet & dry areas. It was just 1 large beach, totally flat, and all sand was fairly packed, so even made it difficult to try to determine where the towel line would have been.
I was able to pull 3 targets, all small & thin pieces of iron. But IMO, that’s OK as I’m still learning the Dual Field PI and 2 out of the 3 targets were deep and only provided me with whisper signals. I had to really listen and focus because the threshold tone on the Dual Field is a bit chatty, it’s not a smooth single tone, it’s more like static, so sometimes, it’s difficult to determine if you’re over a target or if you’re just listening to static. But those whisper targets are what I’m listening for and trying to train my ears to hear, as whisper signals on a PI tells me that the target is deep, and 2 of the 3 targets that gave me whisper signals were indeed deep.
Thurs 3/26/26
Back out and ready to give it another go on Thursday. I had to try to keep my lips together and breath through my nose, as the winds were pretty strong on both Weds & Thurs. If I breathed through my mouth, the wind would dry out my lips, giving me cotton mouth, which required me to stop and grab a sip of water. So, I tried to keep my lips together as much as possible to avoid the cotton mouth problem, lol.
Take a look at the waves in this pic I took on Thursday, and you’ll notice that the waves on this day are coming in from the right to left. The day before (Weds), they were coming from left to right. That’s because the winds on Wednesday were coming down the coast from the North, but the winds on Thursday were coming up the coast from a SSE direction, which caused the waves to come in from the right to left. There was even 1 time when I caught a blast of much warmer air, and then it was back to cooler winds.
The wet sand on Thursday was much firmer than on Weds. The winds had shifted from the north on Weds and were now coming up from the south, so it was apparent that most of the large granule soft sand had moved and/or was pulled back into the ocean. There were still a few spots that were a bit softer, but not like the day before and the majority of the wet sand was more firm on Thursday.
It wasn’t too long after starting to hunt the firmer sand that I got my first signal, took 2 scoops, and noticed an elastic bracelet type thing with beads, probably a kid’s bracelet. It looks like it’s been in the water for some time as there are probably some type of metal beads on the bracelet and they’re encrusted with ocean growth. I took a quick look then in the pouch it went. Shortly after finding that, I got a whisper signal, so I knew the target was deep. IIRC, I took about 3 or 4 scoops, deep enough that water was bubbling up from the bottom of the hole. When I dumped the last scoop, I saw a round green disk lying on top of the sand. Bend down, grabbed it, and it was a quarter with a noticeably green patina, so that quarter has been under water for some time. It was great to find a coin, but was also a bummer because I found that quarter in the middle of the wet section of sand, and it was down pretty deep. So that told me that heavier objects like cheddar would be further down the wet under water and would probably be much deeper than the depth of the quarter.
BTW, pinpointing with the Dual Field is excellent. It’s either the detector or the experience I gained pinpointing with my Sovereign Elite over 14+ years, maybe a combination of the two. But I’m really happy with the pinpointing ability of the Dual Field. So when I say I took 2 or 3 or 4 scoops, those are scoops in the same position as the first scoop, just going deeper. It’s very rare that I need to move the scoop over to widen the hole because I was off on pinpointing. I seem to be digging less holes with the Dual Field, because the pinpointing is very accurate and usually puts me right over the target.
After those first 2 finds, I switched to an East/West then West/East hunting pattern. So, I’d start at the high tide mark, then work slowly down and into the water, overlapping my sweeps, making sure to cover every square inch. I’d go out to about thigh deep, turn around, then work my way back up to the high tide line, continuing to work slowly and overlap each sweep. Even though I wasn’t out that deep, the water was angry and came rushing in with a pretty strong force.
Interestingly, I didn’t get any signals out in the water. All of the targets I found were in the wet. That said, the wet sand I was finding targets in was under water when the tide was in/high, but since the tide was receding, I was able to work the exposed wet sand. Of course, I still had to dig quickly and once I knew the target was in the scoop, it was up the wet I’d go before dumping the sand. Even with doing that, there were times where water would still come rushing up and cover the hole or target, so I still had to time my digs so that I was digging as water was receding back to the ocean and before it came rushing back in.
The wet section of the beach I worked was the entire width of the hotel, which covered 1 entire block. After starting off with finding the bracelet and quarter, I was hoping there would be more goodies to find, especially since I was working the wet in a down & up pattern, was working slowly, and overlapping my sweeps. But those 2 targets were the only half-way decent targets I found. The rest were various pieces of iron. But personally, that was OK with me. Of course I would have loved to have found some cheddar or Silver, or more coins. But I’m currently learning how my PI operates and what it’s telling me, so all targets I find are helping me learn the detector. That knowledge only comes through experience, so it’s all good.
After owning BBS/SMF’s, VLF’s, TR’s, and BFO’s over the last 56 year, the Dual Field is my first PI and it’s proving to be an even bigger beast than my Sovereign Elite with 12x10 SEF Butterfly coil. FrankenDuFi literally continues to blow my mind with how sensitive and deep it is. Look at the first object to the left of the quarter. It’s a very small iron/metal ferrule, yet the Dual Field sounded off on that small bit of metal loud and clear. Even more mind blowing, look at that teeny tiny piece of metal to the left of the ferrule, that one gave me a whisper signal. I have no idea what it is or was part of, and I swear the thing is no bigger than a knat. I have no earthly idea how my PI is able to hit on a target that small. It’s only because it was mixed in with wet sand that it didn’t fall through the holes in my scoop. And it was only because I took my pinpointer on this trip; otherwise, I would have never been able to find it. It’s the type of target I call a “noseeum”, because even when spreading the sand out with my foot, I couldn’t see it. I used the pinpointer to locate, then stuck my hand under the sand to scoop up a small section, then continued to use the pinpointer to narrow down where the target was.
I’ve found small targets with my Sovereign, but the Dual Field is just ridiculous, it even hit on another noseeum that looked like it was 1 thin strand of wire about ¼ inch long. I couldn’t even grab it with my fingers it was so short & thin, but at least I was able to catch a glimpse of it, thanks to my pinpointer.
So, that’s another hunt with the Dual Field. With every hunt, I gain more experience with a PI, and hear and learn more about this detector. And going forward, I think I’ll be taking my pinpointer with me every time I use the Dual Field on the beach. It saved me a lot of time looking for targets that are almost impossible to see.
