Hunting for Gold Nuggets

Hunting for nuggets is such a confusing topic and it would almost be impossible to give a full explanation on it since it is so extensive. There have been a lot of things written about this gold recovery method but a lot of times the explanations are confusing for recreational or weekend prospectors. We will however, provide you with information on the basic instructions for finding nuggets in streams of moving water as well as dry washes and old diggings.

Nugget Hunting in Water: First thing you want to do before nugget hunting in water is to make sure you have a submersible search coil. You will need to very carefully adjust the ground balance controls of your metal detector in order to get rid of interference from the very mineralized black sands that can be found in almost all gold bearing stream beds. It is suggested to use earphones so as to improve your attentiveness to even the faintest signal of the detector. The water usually makes noise and it is sometimes difficult to hear the signals so using earphones should help.

You should use the search coil from close to five inches or higher above the bottom of the stream and move it slowly over the area that you are searching. Working height will depend on mineralization in the area and the noise these minerals let off. 

Besides having a metal detector you will need to have the following in order to successfully hunt for nuggets in water:

• A good plastic gold pan

• A shovel or trowel. This will largely depend on how deep the water is and you will also need a little pry bar to release and loosen the rock and gravel that is compacted. 

If you find a metallic object you should shovel up a few inches of gravel and sand and put it in your plastic gold pan. Make sure to test the whole pan of material by using your detector to see if you have recovered the target that caused the signal in the first place. If you realize that the target is not in the pan, the contents should be thrown back into the water. Then find the target again with the detector and scoop another shovel of material from the stream bed back into your pan. Keep on doing this process over and over until you are able to find the target in your gold pan. If you do find your target, you should still check the hole again to make sure there are not more targets in it.

Once you are sure you have the metallic object inside your gold pan, you should first try to find it visually by sorting the rocks and little pieces of gravel with a lot of care. If you are not able to find it you should concentrate the material by panning it. If you are still not able to find anything after this, it is possible you have only found trash, like a nail etc. Highly mineralized hot rocks with mineral content different from the one your metal detector is able to eliminate. You should use the normal steps for checking hot rocks.

This same detection method can be used on old dredge tailings and it can be done either in the water or on banks of streams. Almost all the rock piles that are on backs along side steams are dredge tailings. Old dredge tailings have given some great gold finds for prospectors with metal detectors. So make sure you don’t let this opportunity pass you by.