So how does a person go about reading a river/creek/stream to find where the gold should be at? In my area we have spring run off which can alter a river/creek/stream a lot, usually only for a short period of time though. How do you go about reading it to find the gold during runoff? Then what do you look for during mid summer and the same areas are low where are the key points to look for? I have hit a few little areas here and I have come to think maybe I am just not hitting the correct area. My prospecting friend is telling me that if you are not diggnig in the direct center of the water source you are wasting your time. I find it hard to believe gold is ALWAYS in the main current. So is there a favorite book, internet link you can direct me to or just a few words of advice?
As always Thank You for taking the time out of your day to answer my questions.
Maurice AKA: goldless LOL
Replies
first try Lake Sacramento by Hunsaker for a good read, on line. then look in the shortest line down the stream or river. Never fail for me. Steven
Here is a good Read http://www.wsgs.uwyo.edu/Publications/OnlinePubs/docs/IP/IP-9.pdf
I know this is a very old topic, but any one could have happened to download the article of the above link provided by Spur, would you mind share it again? It is no longer available online and the link just brings a (404) error code .
Thank you .
ok so again like clock work I go out and find an area that supposedly gold has been found. But as you can probly already can figure out. NOTHING. It is a little creek in a known gold area. I was on the upside of a culvert and Dave was on the down side. I did a test pan and found nothing except some black sand and a piece of quartz. But was encouraged by the amount of black sand. So I did the little line through the S trick and started to dig. This creek is maybe 3 feet wide. I am off the side of it at the bend. Just where I should be I think. I dug a hole about 20 or so inches deep and a couple feet in diamater. I actually started to dig deep enough that I was hitting the clay layer. So I had to by hand desolve each glob of clay in the pan. I classified using the 1/4" then down to the 80 screen I believe it is. After maybe an hour I took all of my classifieds and ran them through the sluice with the V-matting and nothing. I didnt even have much for black sand. So again I am goldless. LOL
I have found that staying just on top of the clay layer is best, it will act like bedrock most of the time. and I try to never run clay through my sluice as it tends to pull out the gold and not get worked very well. if im using my highbanker i set the angle low and work the clay alot more.
One of you posted about seeing where a lead weight on a balloon would travel in the stream bed. I dug under and behind a boulder probably 18 inches down, and found probably 15 lead weights, but no gold. I thought for sure there would be gold in this spot, just because the lead had settled out there. Then I got to looking closer at the weights, and noticed they were all new looking, with no plier marks and they werent' squished. I figured I just got lucky and found a small pool where some guy dropped is tackle box or box of weights. I'd be rich now if lead was $1600/oz, lol.
Ya might not have dug deep enough....
No Bryan, you found the same spot that 15 other guys floated lead weights attached to a ballon. lol
Lol, I guess so. I admit, I'm pretty green when it comes to prospecting. I tell myself often, "self, you need to get off the beaten path a little bit to get to sites that haven't been worked to death(easy access areas), yet I still stop at a bridge and start working boulders within 30 feet of a road. This weekend I drove a pretty good ways up the north end of the Tallulah river, and found probably a 100 great areas to prospect, if only dredging and diving were legal in National Forest. There are still some good looking bars and curves that aren't easy to get to that are probably loaded with color. Problem is that I'd much prefer to have a partner to try to get to these places, just in case anything were to happen. By myself I tend to stick to the safe areas. For those of you that aren't familiar with the Tallulah river, it currently feeds Lake Burton, the top lake in a chain of GA Power lakes, and once upon a time the mighty Tallulah river carved out the Tallulah Gorge. I'm gonna make sure to be at the farm claim in Buchanan soon to meet some folks, but for sure I'm going to get back up to Rabun County this summer and try my luck again. If anyone is interested in meeting and hitting the three GPAA claims in Rabun County, just PM me and we can work out a weekend. My folks have a small lake house on Lake Burton(if the timing is right, I can reserve the cabin for a Fri-Sun), only about 15 minutes from where two of the claims are supposed to be, I just didn't know what I was looking for.(Turkey Mtn., Persimmon Creek, and Batesville all have GPAA claims hidden somewhere.) Sorry for the lengthy post.
I was thinking it, just not sure about saying it lol. Kind of funny. We have a bar here I have seen dug up at least a dozen times in the last 5 years. Its on the way to a larger cobble bar so I stop and cover it over holes and clean up on the way in or out. It should be packed with colors and probably was years ago. I even dug in the holes they left once to see what all the fuss was about before filling it in, when I first went there. By all rights thats where the gold should be. But about 20 feet away a streak with colors starts and goes about 8 feet wide as it widens up and runs the length of the bar. Not much for the work needed but they only had to walk another 30 feet away from the car to get something for the day. The rule is always: Sample,sample,sample, sample and when you think your done sample more.
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