Gold in Water

Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that just because you find an area with water, there is gold in it. However, one thing that is for sure is that finding gold with water is easier. Gold panning with water is one of the fastest and most practical ways of separating little amounts of heavier metals and elements from debris and gravel. Learning how to use the pan is the trick though.

If you find an area with rapidly flowing water, keep in mind that it will be a little bit more difficult to pan but it is not impossible to do. There are some streams that only have alluvial gold that is washed down further every year with the help of high water. You will be able to locate this alluvial gold throughout the loose gravel and the largest amounts of gold will be trapped by very packed bedrock or gravel. Make sure to also look through other types of things that could trap gold such as large boulders, moss, tree roots, sections in the water where the flow is not so strong since it flows inside bends etc as all these types of areas will normally contain the higher concentration of gold. You should use a rake or shovel to loosen and get rid of the loose gravel on the top. Usually the material can be found in the firmly packed bottom and sometimes on the bedrock too. When you have dug in and have your shovel of gravel, make sure to take it out of the water very slowly and place it in your pan. Make sure to be careful when shovelling and to go slowly and work patiently as you may just lose the gold you have found with the water if you move too quickly.

One of the most common mistakes that weekend prospectors do is that they just scoop up loose rocks and gravel with a gold pan at random thinking they are going to be able to find gold this way. However, it is not common to find gold like this. If you are interested in getting the job done in a faster way and more successfully, use a shovel and shovel the gravel from bedrock. If the bedrock is very hard you can use a pry bar to get into it. It’s not so easy to simply scoop up gold from a stream, I mean, if you think about it; if it were this simple we would have run out of gold a long time ago.

If you are able to locate the bedrock with your eyes, you might be able to use a pry bar to loosen it and to show the gravel and gold that might have been stuck in it for a long time, maybe even years. After the bedrock has been loosened, make sure to clean the little cracks very thoroughly too. After you have loosened the gravel that was packed very hardly, the gold has a tendency of sinking down very quickly to the bottom and this will make it more difficult to get it back.

Don’t trust that just because someone has told you gold can be found in a certain location, you are going to necessarily find it there. Your best bet is to first study up on the subject a little and know what types of places you should be looking for; the signs and signals you should be looking for. Make sure to look at the outline of a river or stream very carefully. Channels do not always stay the same as the years go by. Another thing, in general (unless they have been extensively prospected) older channels generally contain the richest deposits. Stop and look at the stream and try to picture where it might have been flowing in the past years and where the bends and curves might move more quickly and where the stream might slow down and drop the gold you are looking for. Gold will settle down in areas where the water does not flow as rapidly and will many times get trapped in rougher sections of the bedrock. It is not common for gold to be found in smooth sections, specifically in areas where the current flows quickly.

Potholes and waterfall are not the best places for panning because the quick water flow and the rocks cause there to be a “mill” that then grinds the gold to dust and then places it back in to the water flow. Try to find feeder creeks and secluded areas where it would have been difficult for people in the past to have used large scale sluices. Use a shovel in order to dig underneath the loose gravel and mine holes from the streambed where you imagine the original channel might have been. Take advantage of water worn gravel because this can help you to find the existence of old channels.