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Did something the end of the summer season I haven't done before.

I went to visit a friend of mine that runs a large placer operation.They had made a cut 70 feet deep to bedrock, and they'd piled the dirt up near their huge washplant to be processed. After the large run was finished, there was a small pile of pay left on the big area they'd scraped to push up the remainder of the piled paydirt.

My friend told me to take my detector over to the pile to have a bit of fun. I was shocked by his offer, but of course, I giddy-upped to the site and started swinging my detector. Within minutes I had my first repeatable good signal that was pinning at 40 on the Bug Pro. Using my Garrett Carrot, I'd soon pinpointed a nice, flat nugget in the pile.

I kept working my way around the pile, up and over the pile, and worked my way carefully all the way around the bottom of the pay-pile. In this way, I recovered 5 sassy nuggets, which was much like shooting fish in a barrel, but way more fun.

However, my gold fever brain kept nudging me to try to the scraped area around the pile, a much larger undertaking, so I headed out into the wilderness of flatness . . .

About ten feet out from the pile, I got a good signal under a rock about twice the size of my fist. At least, that's what I thought. But, when I levered the rock out (which was a hot rock), the signal was more to the front of the rock (as it faced the direction of the pay pile). The hot rock had been distorting the signal.

I scanned the hole again where the rock had been, and sure enough, the signal was coming from the area described above, and its signal was pinning in the 60 range on the digital display of the Bug Pro. I used the Garrett Carrot to pinpoint the signal, and it sure came back nice and loud! Moreover, I could see the edge of the nugget.

I reached down at the tip of the Carrot and pulled out a flat and sassy nugget of just under six grams! (The flatness was likely why it read so high on the digital meter.)

I kept working the scraped area and recovered another three nuggets, so by the time the rain hit to stop the party, I'd pulled out nine sweet nuggets in total, weighing in at over a third of an ounce.

It was a fun way to spend a couple of hours.

Of course there were lots of bits of steel blade and track shavings, but the gold was consistent due to the loaded nature of the area I was working.

I made my way over to my friend's truck to show him what I'd found, and he was surprised that I'd found the biggest nuggets in the scraped area, and he assured me they would sure scrape deep before they were finished with the pay-pile area.

I decided to give him all nine of the nuggets, even though he wanted me to keep some of them, as he's been great to me over the years to let me detect on his claims wherever and whenever.

Fun, fun catch and release day.

All the best,

Lanny