MA/VT/NH Panning

[dvdtharaldson]

Hi ,

This is the first time I have posted on this website. I live in Western MA and am planning a trip during the last few days of September to Vermont to try my luck panning. I was going to try Buffalo Brook and Five Corners in the Bridgewater area. Does anybody know how far down you ordinarily have to dig to hit black sands in those areas? Any comments on whether you have to dig deep or just stay on the surface? I was thinking Irene probably deposited alot of flood gold on the surface. Does anybody know if some of the small brooks high up in the mts. north of Bridgewater contain gold? All I ever hear is Buffalo Brook and Five Corners. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. As you probably could tell I am new to panning for gold.

Thanks,

David

 

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[WesternMassGold]

Hello folks,
Finally got back from our gold mining trip to Vermont.
David and i went up on Friday and got back on Monday.We decided to join the famous Vermont Goldrush. ( 170 years late lol).
The view of Buffalo brook was breath taking.Deep ravines with 100 foot drops and just a beautiful place to be.

Bedrock everywhere. But also a lot of places people have been mining.we had to walk a long time before we found a place that looked undisturbed.
Also noticed my backpack must be fashionable because the local butterfly population really loved it.

We spent the day there and i got 233 pieces on Saturday.The other days we roamed around and visited 3 other brooks.
My total for the trip was 395 pieces plus 1 picker.waiting for it to dry out so i can weigh it.Had a great time and will be back next year for sure.

 

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[KevinInColorado]

Sounds like a great time and congrats on an impressive gold take. Time to move up from counting colors to weighing it indeed!

 

[WesternMassGold]

ok, the gold dried out from the Vermont trip,threw it on a scale and i came up with >>> 0.14 grams. most i ever found in 1 weekend.

 

[dvdtharaldson]

Wow, its been awhile between posts! Earlier in the year I visited NH. I went to tunnel brook and was quite surprised by the high water devastation there. I seemed to have a hard time adjusting to the local conditions there. Lots of overburden, lots of private property. But I still did alright.

I mostly have been visiting Vermont, no surprise there, right. Buffalo brook was the highlight trip of the year for me. WMG and I had a good time and good luck. I was lucky enough to see a bear! First one in quite a few years.

I also went up to the Stowe area and had pretty good luck in Gold Brook. I was quite befuddled when I went back to some places that had produced very well for me in the past and found very little in the way of colors.

The pic is from the Couch brook area. I ended up walking upstream for a short while to try to stretch out my sore back and then drove back downstream to one of the last productive areas that I know. The geography appeared to be all wrong, after all I was on an outside bend. After carefully perusing the area I discovered the geography wasn't wrong, I was. What is now an outside bend, was once an inside bend. Don't be fooled by current conditions, the past is what/where you want to be looking.

I did find one real nice flake, somewhere in the #10 range. Found around 25 pieces for an hours worth of total panning time, which was spread out over a whole morning. Why didn't I know about this in my teens instead of late 50's?

Best Colors,
dvdt

 

[dvdtharaldson]

I have often extoled the virtues of the BGT sluice in my thread. A magnificent piece of equipment indeed. I have also read many posts of people asking "which sluice should I buy"? That really is such a general question that it is nearly impossible to answer. The answer really depends on what your trying to do and under what conditions your trying to do it.

I recently went prospecting and found very little water in the stream. A meager flow here and there, with a lot of exposed streambed everywhere. In this situation a BGT would of been useless in my opinion. The water level wouldn't have made it up to the bottom of the slick plates of the models that I have seen.

In this case my Angus Mac Kirk recon sluice worked wonderfully. There was less than a half inch of water in the sluice and it excelled at catching the colors. I classified down to #6 mesh and slowly fed in the cons. I waited between 2 to 5 seconds in between additions and the sluice cleared itself beautifully. What I specifically liked about the sluice was that you could slightly over-feed the top two riffles and the design would enable the bottom riffles to catch colors while the top riffles cleared. It really sped up the process. It caught colors from 20 mesh on down to less than -120 mesh. For all I know it could have caught colors much smaller than that, that presently, I am no longer able to see w/o the use of some sort of optics.

I and my mining partner WMG had banner days. Personally, I beat my best daily piece total by around 50 percent. Wow!

Best Colors,
dvdt

 

[nh.nugget]

Where I go on the Wild Am the water is sooooo low I had to turn my Keene A52 into a high-banker and pump the water.

 

[vaquero44]

yeah my creeks in maine a pan is almost useless unless you dry pan I guess i'm not a fan of rain but man we could really use some

 

[WesternMassGold]

To follow up on David's post. Like he said the water levels in Mass are scary low.Rivers are as low as 12% of capacity.
We went out Tuesday and found a new place, but sluicing was out of the question for my Goldhog mats.
I panned all day and like David said we had an awesome day.

After 6 hrs i ended up with 168 pieces.

 

[WesternMassGold]

Things you do when you get really bored. I decided to take all my gold i found since i started 2 years ago ,clean out the last pieces of black sand and throw it all on a scale.
I put the pickers and larger pieces on top . A total of 4317 pieces .

I reached my first milestone it added up to exactly 1 gram. Wohooo!!

 

[triple d]

Pictures some times don"t do justice. But I would say more like 3 or 4 grams. Thats a lot of pieces for a gram and for New England.Those are above average sizes for New England Gold. At least compaired to what I find. Thanks for shareing. A very nice stash.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Glad I was there when you caught a bit of that...good times last summer!

 

[dvdtharaldson]

Glad I was there when you caught a bit of that...good times last summer!

When you coming back?

 

[KevinInColorado]

When you coming back?

No idea yet. I will get as Far East as Michigan this fall. Maybe New England next year [emoji106]

When I do, I'll definitely let you know. Would be great to dig together again!

 

[WesternMassGold]

Went back to our new top secret location David and I found.
Still not enuff water to sluice so i spent the day panning again.
Almost another picker >again<.
It sure is fun when you pan down the black sand and see that piece of gold appear and you start telling it. "grow,grow" but it wont listen .lol.
Ended up with 99 pieces with the 2 larger ones the right side.

 

[WesternMassGold]

Looks like this was our final trip to our new secret location.
Went there yesterday and the last 15 pans had no gold in it.
checked different holes nearby and got zero.
Looks like we emptied that spot too. I think we pulled a total of about 700 pieces out of it.
Yesterday i finished with 124 pieces after about 8 hrs panning.

 

[gold panner]

I would agree that looks like more then a gram! congrats

 

[bostonmike]

Hey Guys,
Anyone been up to the Wild AM recently near the Twin Rivers campground? I'm heading up this weekend to do some prospecting with my BGT. Last I heard water levels were really low. Are they too low for the BGT? Thanks in advance!

 

[nh.nugget]

You might have an issue with water. It is barely flowing. We might get some rain up there later this week.

 

[WesternMassGold]

The water levels in New England are extremely low. Last weekend i took a piss in the river here in western Mass and the National Weather service issued a flood warning.

I havent sluiced in 4 months.it's been all panning due to lack of water.Better bring a pan, just in case.

 

[dvdtharaldson]

Over the last month or so I have been returning to a productive spot in the river that I found a couple of months ago. During my Indian Hollow camping trip I went there 3 or 4 times. Every time there were diminishing returns The days of over 100 pieces are gone. Went there yesterday and sluiced with my AM recon and found only 5 or 6 pieces.

I did find another spot that held colors and ended up with around 37 pieces.

To bostonmike think about getting an AM sluice for low water times. It seems that low waters are much more frequent than high water. I really like my recon for very low water. So much so, that I am thinking about getting the next size up for when the water is a little higher, but not high enough for a BGT. It is really cool to see the larger pieces on the flair at the top. I haven't used my BGT since April.

Best Colors,
dvdt