NEW AT THE GAME AND NEED TIPS AND ADVICE

Hey everyone,i am wondering if anyone can give some helpful tips and advice.
My brother has recently bought a GPX 4500 and we have been going out prospecting pretty much every weekend since he got it. We have only been out and about five times and have found 13 or so nice bits of gold all around the same area. the first bit we found was in a little wash out at the bottom of a small hill and was a nice 7 gram quartz specimen with a nice gold vein running through it. the next weekend we went back to the same area but further in on the property this time and found a nice little washout/creek that was dry and not very deep with nice silky clay type of dirt on the banks. this is were we found 6 more little bits one was 4 grams and another was 3 grams and the rest were all a bit smaller. we went back again on the weekend that has just gone but this time we went to a different spot again but on the same property and found a nice little wash out in between two little hills with the same type of dirt as the previous one and not really deep again. anyway we followed it up with the detector and got 6 little bits again but all were only around a 1 gram or two in weight.

can anyone give me some tips on were we should be looking next, should we grid if so could someone give me tips on how to grid, should we follow the washout up to the top of the hill and search there? or can someone give me some ideas from experience, were the gold might be sitting or coming from on this spot. all tips and advice will be greatly appreciated.

Hi Goldreefer
Sounds Like your doing just fine and I bet there are lots of operators who never started off as well as your guys seem to be doing, me included.
Keep working, expanding your area and put in the time and map out your finds and you should work out a pattern of where the gold is coming from.
Start to grid where you find the better pieces and when you have covered that area move to the next spot, I also would suggest not to move up too high as the gold would have been shifted off the hills to the lower gullies, but also remember the bottom of the gullies has a higher build up of overburden and the gold will be much deeper and out of detector range.
Dig some test holes to check depth .
Look at the roughness and weathering of the gold and even start to loam if your looking for a reef.
Cheers Mark

MS thanks for the positive feedback,the gold we have found is fairly rough and rugged looking and was found closer to the top of the hill in the washout and we also found a couple of bits that were waterworn but they were at the bottom of the hill,is there a reason for this? are we close to a reef or is it just the way that gold travels? also MS what do you mean when you say we should start to loam if we are looking for a reef?

Hi Goldreefer
Ok so hacky or rough gold is good and specimen gold is better, remember gold breaks down from a reef over millions of years and works it way over time to the lower ground away from the reef that sheded and this movement causes the gold to become rounded and weathered , also the host rock breaks off the pieces and eventually your left with clean rounded nuggets or fine gold.
loaming is taking soil samples from the lower areas where you are finding gold and panning them off to see how much gold is present. take a line across and mark this line with markers ,pan off the gold from each seperate sample bag, then move up and take another sample run, keep this up and you will see the run of gold and when it cuts out you have gone past the reef.
Come back down to the last gold sample in the middle of the line run and start digging , moving up to expose the reef, sometimes only the surface of the reef had gold along shoots and could be now barren of gold.
keep in mind the gold run fans out from the reef and the closer you are to it the narrow the gold line will be.
Cheers Mark

hey MS thanks for the explanation mate i will give what you said a go on the weekend when we go back up to the spot. all your help is greatly appreciated and i will also post a picture of the gold we have found in that spot on here so you can have a look.

here is the gold my brother and i have found.

hey goldreefer,

thats some nice colour. Some thoughts of mine- if you map where you have found those bits already, you will probably notice your own little/ large golden triangle forming.... or at least just picture the area in your head

how deep were those colours your finding and what coil are u using? (you may only be scraping the surface of whats there...)

are you finding lots/ any buried rubbish thats old? not counting typical surface crap you find most places.. ie cases, slugs, shot, fence wire and ties. no buried old rubbish is virgin turf....

you may be able to get a better feel (depending of depth of ground) of where the gold shed from with the detector before you start diggin holes and panning, but mate, if thats virgin turf, i would be all over it like a dog looking for a buried bone!

the richness of gold will be at the bottom of the topsoil and deeper, once you hit something hard anyway, man i would almost pay to come and see whats going on there! consider an offer?

PS: if there are any flatter areas (terrace) on that hill, i will go ya thirds with the fistfulls you are likely to / or may find there...!

hi ferrousfinder
we were using a 18 inch nugget finder advantage coil and only came up with one piece then we went back the next weekend and change the coil to the standard 11 inch dd coil that came with the detector.
the deepest nugget we found was about 10 inches down and the rest were about 5-6 inches down.
as for the type of ground it is very virgin ground no rubbish at all not even a bullet shell,just heaps of hot rock and highly mineralized ground.
as for the offer thanks but me and my brother are the only people allowed there sorry mate lol.
but i will definitely keep you posted and thanks for the positive feedback it is greatly appreciated.
if you have anymore tips or advice feel free to share.

Maybe you could 'flag' where each nugget was found with small flags / golf tees and see if there is a pattern forming, like a fan pattern, the apex may be the source location.
From your pic it looks like the edges of the gold are rounded and not 'sharp' so they possibly have travelled a distance. There may still be a direct source location or a quartz reef long ago has eroded and weathered away spreading over your hill. If it is farming land the gold might have been spread by ploughing, but you may still find a pattern of deposition.
I reckon you should work the area systematically and 'mark' any finds, also check if the gold starts getting 'sharp' edges (indicating you are getting closer to the source).

Good on you and well done.

Scott.

Wow congratulations it took me 15 months to find my first nugget. You guys are onto a good thing. You could go over the exact same area you've already done and find more nuggets that you missed the first time. Also a different coil over the same area and get more again. People keep telling me that no one ever gets it all.

plus varying levels of leaf litter, bushes, logs that could be rolled over etc.. make for more ground that you may not have detected completely the first time. Keep at it. Sounds like a detectorists dream.

Dicko..

You could detect along the hill like a contour line, say a hundred yards
or so (depends on the location), then step up hill say 4 yards then
detect a parallel line to your first line back to where place you
started (you should be about 4 yards uphill from where you first
started), then repeat your way up hill.
Dig every target and mark
the spots you find gold.

If a pattern starts to show concentrate
your grid to cover every bit of ground, remember to detect a pattern
over a pattern, search the area from different directions left to right,
right to left, uphill, then downhill, then do the diagonals. Overlap
your coil coverage so you cover every bit of ground 'underground' , the
gold has probably settled on a 'base' that it can't sink into, where I
live that is a clay base or 'bedrock'. Sometimes the gold finds holes,
depressions and cracks in the base that it may settle into, so they will
be deeper. Rule of thumb go slow and low.

Scott.

hi clay base thanks for the feedback mate i will defently give what you said a try.i think we are going to take a rottryhoe up on the weekend and rip the ground were we found the gold so that we can get more depth with the detector.

GoldReefer wrote: here is the gold my brother and i have found.

v v v nice im comeing to queensland . good ona boys / give;s us hope nuggerman