New gold prospecting question quartz

[cazisme]

I live near Placerville California and Have access to a creek that has stacked rocks on one wall from earlier miners up the bank. There are mounds/depressions about the size of vw bugs that have broken quartz mixed with dirt from thumbsized to size of footballs. The mounds also have depressions around like filled in mines or holes maybe. I will post pics when it stops raining here. How would you go about prospecting here? I have a gmt and have tried it for a few hours and found some 22 shells and shotgun shells as well as some wire. Any inoput would be greatly appreciated. Lots of black sand in the creek but its a dry creek most of the year.

 

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[63bkpkr]

Howdy there cazisme,
I will be interested to see your pictures of the mounds and depressions. Several years ago I came across a sloping hillside with these depressions all over it but in somewhat of an orderly fashion. Upon inspection of the site I figured out that this is where the miners camped at, each depression was a miners 'home'. If you have found such a spot then it needs to be detected very carefully as there could be some nice finds to be located. I found eye glass frames, hobnail boots, a round bottom bottle and various other items.

As you are using a GMT for detecting it will be harder to be certain of what you've detected till you dig the target up. I own a GMT and it will find all metal, it really likes brass ammunition casings! It also likes lead and does a happy dance as it thinks it has just found a nice gold nugget. And of course it also likes gold and does a good job of finding the yellow metal. Do you have any exposed bedrock. If you have exposed bedrock then you want to be certain to read Lanny's thread about finding gold in bedrock. I followed his advice and found gold in bedrock. Actually what I was finding were small flakes of gold that had gone down small cracks in the bedrock and the detector will find those flakes. The tool of choice for what I am talking about is a very thin, flat nail remover/puller as the wide straight end will just start to go into the crack and then a sharp rap on the 90 degree angle end will drive the puller right down the crack causing the rock to split away along the cracks that are there.

I look forward to seeing your pictures........63bkpkr