No problem Lanny.
Regarding my honey hole, it's abt. 20 miles north of Coldfoot Alaska, so I'm not too worried about letting the cat out of the bag. As for the water hunting, where the water was flowing swiftly I'd often put up a tiny wing dam & angle the water away. Quite often moving a large rock would accomplish the same thing. Also, when removing a shovelful of material, stand downstream and draw it quickly towards you while lifting. This way everything is going at the same velocity and the pay stays on the shovel. I also would either do a pseudo-groundsluice or just start moving material to the side. When the target moved, I'd know where it was & then start scooping. If possible, I'd scoop onto the side of the bank (a few big shovelfulls) & then check the hole & piles. If luck was with me (and it often was), the nugget would be sitting on the bank. Quite often enough material would be moved so that a bit of rooting around in the hole would cough up the nugget. Upon seeing it I'd often say to myself "damn the cold & wet", and reach down & grab it.
Strangely enough, in many instances it was easier to hunt in the water 'cause the relative density made it easy to move quite hefty rocks & get rid of other overburden. Also, unless it had a black coating, the nugget nugget would be clean, polished & "shining like a diamond in a goat's a$$" (I just love some the expressions I pick up down south). Even if the nugget managed to catch a bit of current, it never moved too far & was easy to recover.
One thing I haven't mentioned is the shovel. I use one tat kinda looks like a posthole digger or a treeplanting shovel. Essentialy, it's not too wide so it wont catch a lot of current & has abt a 4' staff handle with a rare earth magnet on the end covered with duct tape. Before I do any serious excavating I run the magnet through, pulling out heaps of black sand and (hopefully) any iron. I'm going to modify the kick plate on it, weling on a strip of 1/2" steel along the back & down the sides for abt. 3". Pulled out of the water properly, any signifigant bits of gold will settle down close to the blade & only light crap will blow off.
Regarding the weather, I'm kinda chomping at the bit. Figure I'll have a few months to do research on B.C. and build/modify equiptment. Maybe I'll build one of the PI's whose plans are on the Geotech site. Anyway, getting sleepy..Willy.
