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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[arizau]

Years ago I told my wife I would take up golf if she would take up fly fishing. In retrospect it should have been then and it would now include prospecting. Side note: I hope I never have to take up golf. Fishing and prospecting are frustrating enough.

 

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[KevinInColorado]

Given a choice between spending lots of time and money chasing a ball around in a park manicured by people vs. playing hide and seek games with Mother Nature to find gold, I’ll take Mother Nature every time!

 

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

David I feel your pain with the joints I had to stop prospecting and hiking, even walking around Brimfield as my knees are bone on bone and I am trying to get the docs to approve a double knee replacement, I can't stand more than a short while. I used to love to go to Newport and Beavertail and clamber on the rocks to take pictures, can't do that at this time.

I have actually bought some pay just to pan, somehow it seems more exciting than salting my own...

 

[Mass Hole No.59]

Ben,
Good luck with getting your knee replacements. I know how painful and debilitating messed up knees can be. It seems that they are the only joints in your body that you can't somewhat accommodate.

Keep the faith,
David

 

[Mass Hole No.59]

My wife and I decided it was time to take a well deserved vacation. As so often happens with us, we headed north to Vermont, almost by instinct. She shops and then shops some more, and I fish and then fish some more. Then we hike, usually next to a stream or river. I really like being amongst all those charged ions generated by water striking rock. Most people call them rapids.

We were in one of the well known gold producing areas, but just in a general sense, not in any of the well known productive streams. The hike that we undertook was surrounded by geology that I usually look for when searching for colors. That particular place will have to wait to be sampled though on some future return trip.

On the way home I stopped in on Broad Brook. I have been hearing that some lucky souls have been doing quite well there, albeit in a very closely held secret place. As I meandered up the road, all the time searching for the tell tale signs of prospecting activity, I suddenly got the feeling I was being observed. I slowed down and sure enough I spotted some prospectors leering at me like trolls from under their bridge. I got out of my vehicle and was soon beset upon by them. They wanted to know how I found out about this place. I told them that I wasn't after their pot of gold but just the experience of being there.

They were all kind of stunned and asked if I was a prospector and if I had my equipment with me. After conversing with them for an hour or so and finding out I was in the area and looking for colors, they came clean and showed me their quite impressive takes for the day and in some cases for the season. One person even showed me exactly where he found the small nuggets that were in his vial. Another asked me to join him next to where he was digging, but unfortunately for me this wasn't a serious prospecting trip and much to my wife's delight, I declined. Of course I didn't have permission from the landowner and it was posted property. Unfortunately the land owner wasn't home at the time and I couldn't get permission.

I was wondering if those nice Lilliputians were just trying to bait me into prospecting so I might loose permission to prospect there when the land owner got home. I have heard that he usually gives permission when asked but will boot out trespassers who fail to ask.

It is very hard to leave when you see full pans and vials with nuggets. Hopefully next time!

Happy trails and best colors,
MH#59

 

[placertogo]

From my experiences, mostly in Maine and New Hampshire, I would say they were trying to feel you out to see if you were a “tree hugger” type. Most New England prospectors understand that our (mostly) glacial gold is so spread out that no one is going to ever find it all.

 

[Mass Hole No.59]

Yeah,
I would proudly call myself a tree hugger type. I know its a rarity among prospectors but I am an environmentalist. I care about the brook trout and caddis flies. The quality of the watershed is important to me. The health of the ecosystem is paramount.


But I also am a realist. I don't think digging in the middle of streambeds does any damage at all. Sometimes I think people who plant gardens/lawns actually do more damage to ecosystems than conscientious prospectors do. Herbicides, pesticides, monoculture? Hmmmm…

 

[RTD-Tech]

A new supervolcano is brewing under Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire

A new supervolcano is brewing under Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire | Fox News

This article is interesting and unexpected. I wonder if it will someday push up fresh gold deposits for new England prospectors in the far future.

 

[Capt Nemo]

I think it might be the same hotspot that built the Keweenaw. I'd expect it'd bring massive amounts of copper and silver.

Short term, it might make gold harder to get, as the ground deformation may open bedrock cracks allowing gold to sink deeper.

 

[WesternMassGold]

I would not worry about what the earth crust will do in your life time.
Things move so slow that you will never notice. and as far as gold going deeper is concerned>>do you really think gold is going to be harder to get because the earth crust is going to move about 1 inch in the next 50 years?
And if you are actually "worried" about a volcano exploding in about 50 Million years then you are overestimating your life expectancy.

 

[Capt Nemo]

Just depends on how much ground inflation is occurring. Even a millimeter could drop fine gold down a crack a foot or more.

 

[E.MassAuMan]

Finally got out for the first prospecting trip of 2018 and was joined by my good prospecting friend Mr.MH 59.
Went to a new spot of his out in the Couch Brook area. It was a beautiful day and as the pic shows the water levels are low


I have been hobbled with some hip issues so was glad to get out but only could go full out for a little over 2 hours
David panning out his cons from his MacKirk Sluice


My take for the day


I brought home some classified dirt from the spot we were working and have gotten another 10 or so pieces, a good start to the season.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Great to see you guys out there. Makes me reminisce about our adventures!

 

[Mass Hole No.59]

Wow, it's been awhile! It seems like I have been doing other things rather than prospecting. Who would of thunk it. Anyway, E.MassAuMan called the other day and told me that my thread was in danger of dropping to page 2. I thought about it for awhile and decided it was time to actively do some digging.

Recently I secured permission to prospect in various parts of the stream that formerly weren't available to me. This year the new properties really didn't pan out for me though. We had moderate luck at best. I am convinced that they will pay off in the future due to the size of some of the colors found. A few good rainstorms might do the trick.

So, we decided to hit the place I turned my partner from the east, onto. We followed the paystreak that I have been working off and on for the last couple of years. Sometimes it's good, other times it's not. Every once in a while it is real good, at least by Mass standards. This time around it was pretty good to us.

Fall is definitely one of my favorite times in which to prospect. Few if any bugs, cool weather, and great foliage. Autumn is also a time when wildlife of all kinds are active. I bring this up because of the aftermath of all of the auto/wildlife collisions I espied on my trip up north. Slow down a little and give them a chance. It's their world too.


Best Colors and Happy Trails,

MH#59

 

[E.MassAuMan]

This Past week I celebrated my Birthday by taking the day off from work to head out to north central Massachusetts to do some Panning. I turned 39 ‘again’
Mr MH 59 was very nice to join in the celebration and we worked a spot that we had been to earlier in the year




The hole we were working, nice gravel with quartz mixed in. We never got down to a clay layer as we had in other parts of this particular stream



One of David’ Cleanout’ from his Bazooka


We have been having significant rains here in Massachusetts lately and the streamflow was fast and cold



The combined take for the day.

A great way to spend a special day with a good friend

 

[RTD-Tech]

Hey folks, hope you all had a great summer, hope you all got to do a lot more prospecting than I did.

I did get out for a couple of hours for some crevicing last week.

Found my best pan ever. Haha, it might not look like much, but that small flake in the middle is the largest piece I've found. Plus there were seven other smaller pieces.



Hopefully I find time to get back to that spot again before it snows.

 

[arizau]

RTD Have you ever thought about getting a set of classifiers to use before you pan your concentrates for recovery? 4 and 6" diameter screens are pretty inexpensive. 30, 50 and 100 mesh would be my choices and would give you 4 different batches to pan separately. Save your raw mixed size concentrates then classify them down for final recovery at home. You might surprise yourself with more gold.

Good luck

 

[RTD-Tech]

I classify at the river to 1/2, 1/8, 20 and 50 mesh. I pan it down there, suck out the visible specs and bring the cons home. Lol, thats about as far as it goes though. What I bring home usually goes into a bucket without further processing. Haha, I got about 2.5 gallons of cons that may or may not have gold in it.

The material I usually deal with is very fine. After I classify and toss out the +1/2 there is almost no +1/8. Most of the material ends up being -50 muck. But the +20 and -20 still has a ton of very fine silt in it. Does this mean that I'm not classifying correctly, or is it just the nature of the material I'm working. I've thought about getting a 100 mesh classifier, but do to the amount of fine silt in my larger materials, I kinda figured it wouldn't be worth it.

 

[triple d]

Dig deeper get down to the good gravels. The bigger stuff is deeper. And when its gets real hard digging. You should be getting some better amounts of gold. And bedrock would be even better.

 

[arizau]

I classify at the river to 1/2, 1/8, 20 and 50 mesh. I pan it down there, suck out the visible specs and bring the cons home. Lol, thats about as far as it goes though. What I bring home usually goes into a bucket without further processing. Haha, I got about 2.5 gallons of cons that may or may not have gold in it.

The material I usually deal with is very fine. After I classify and toss out the +1/2 there is almost no +1/8. Most of the material ends up being -50 muck. But the +20 and -20 still has a ton of very fine silt in it. Does this mean that I'm not classifying correctly, or is it just the nature of the material I'm working. I've thought about getting a 100 mesh classifier, but do to the amount of fine silt in my larger materials, I kinda figured it wouldn't be worth it.

Are you stacking your classifiers? Feeding it raw dirt? If you are you will get better results if you first pan/wash the material down to about 1/8" and smaller. Doing that will wash out all or most of the silt with little to no chance of losing any gold no matter how small. Get a collection of washed material before you classify. One thing to avoid when classifying is to overload the screens and that can happen pretty quickly in the smaller mesh sizes especially when stacking the screens...check for this often and dump the contents back through when found overloaded. Overloaded screens block the openings and you will have incomplete classification...maybe partly your case? Keep in mind that plus 50 mesh is more than two times as big as minus 100 mesh and gold that size can be lost to the tails when mixed with plus 50.

Hope this helps.