finally

so let's see if i'm doing this well enough to get a reply. obviously new at forums and prospecting. got my sluice bought year and a half ago used it maybe 10 times. had shoulder surgery in March boo . still figuring out flow and drop first couple of times i used it in remote seasonal creek in the feather river canyons.So much black sands and so much chips of garnet under the loupe maybe 30% of sands actually garnet. found one little speck of gold in the black mat of the sluice just big enough to use tweezers to pluck out.kind of chunky not smashed flat. but nothing in the cons panned them down used the loupe to look though them just hematite magnetite and garnet. I think I should keep looking there slow the flow increase the drop and maybe classify to 1/8. what you guys think??
 

Hey I'm pretty new too but, I literally have to get down to half a teaspoon in my pan and slowly SLOWLY swish the water around and recover about fifteen dust particles. Use jet dry in your water
 

Heya;

If your getting lots of black sand and garnets then you should also be catching gold if it were there.
You might want to try another area where gold would usually build up, cleaning bedrock, behind huge boulders, dig down in bends and so on.

Not every spot is a winner but every day you get to go out is.

Good luck, you will get more gold soon. :)
 

hey Neo are you saying give up on the whole creek or just keep looking for better spots on it? not a big creek at all but somebody dug some pretty big holes near the top of the ridge probably back in the thirties, tailings piles out of them.looks like mabybe the foundation of stamp mill little ways down the hill.somebody spent some money looking for a while.I haven't tried a lot of different spots as it's no easy task getting down to the creek itself.
 

If there are signs that the area has been mined then there is a good chance that there is gold there.
I would try to hit the major area's where gold would collect on the creek, it would probably be also a good idea to metal detect the tailings piles.

Also look for drops in the creek and try to imagine it as if it were flooding, look for the flood lines.


I am no expert by any means but those are tips that I have learned so far and they have worked well for me. :)
 

here is was you might want to do. go out to your creek and just take you pan,shovel,pen and a note pad. Now try to imagin your creek when its at its worst winter storm or i like to think of it at its best becouse thats when its moving gold now look for things like neo said bends are great check the inside of the bend from front to back then from side to side mark down your findings on your note pad it helps to draw a picture of the are you in then you will see one if there is any gold there at all and if there is you will see a paystreak and once you have a good idea of were that gold is and its path then bring in the sluice and go into production mode.

watch some videos on youtube alot of the guys on here have great tips and ideas on there and spending a few days walking and sampling your creek will not only get you more informed of whats happing but you will soon be able to walk up tp a spot and know were to look fist and find good gold without completely breaking your back sample sample sample... i hope this helps
 

Do you mind sharing a couple pics with us of the area, maybe a zoomed in screenshot of google earth so we can point out a couple area's to look at.
If you do the google earth screenshot and want to keep your area a secret you will need to erase or draw over the coordinates when you open in in Microsoft Paint.
 

Thanks everybody for the great advice. I'll try to put it to use. Maybe pictures at some point Neo but heck I just figured out how to post and I'm not sure I'm doing this reply thing right. Have to get one of my teenagers to help me. I mostly just use my iPhone anymore .
 

OBD only stupid question when your a newbie is one not asked. For good practice go to Home Garden outta Quincy go south to feather river,park by the bridge. There is righteous bedrock down stream-flakey easily shattered black shale. Go down about a couple a 100 yards as that shale has been blasted to DEATH but great example of good carrier. Across and down is influx from Nelson Creek on the south side. There used to ba a tunnel below the curve that ran under the river and like a young fool we went in. Back to chest deep water and you can actually hear the river above your head. Leaned on a HUGE support beam and hand went through it like soft mush-exited immediataly. Many claims all over. Copy number,name,camc # and go to recorder to see if legit. Up the road is El(La) ?Portal and feeder creeks have one of the few viable platinium group deposits in mexafornia. BUT in spring,summer fall there are weed grows all over and mobile meth labs show up too. Being alone anywhere unarmed is a fools folly as you never need a gun till ..... it's too late to use it-Join a local yokel club be it gem/mineral/detector or gold as goldnutz are in them all and eases them newbie blues bigtime-John
 

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