Mytimetoshine

[Aufisher]

I have seen Mojo scale 20 ft vertical walls dripping wet with pockets chock-full of gold!

 

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[goldenmojo]

We Do or Die, and then deal with scratching the poison oak later. Its gonna be a great summer of gold getting. Hope to get out with all of you soon.

 

[mytimetoshine]

Saturday I met up with SchoolOfHardknocks for some gold gettin.

We decided to hit up the north fork American at Yankee jims. We met at Starbucks in Colfax at 8 and carpooled in since I have a parking pass to the area.

The ride in was nice, they just recently redid the dirt road,I was glad to see that.

We were the first ones there, we crossed that sketchy ass bridge and got the primo parking spot.

Once we were on site Courtney went to work on the high bank doing what he already knew to be productive. I decided to just do my own thing. This is only my second time for me at this particular river and I'm still getting a feel for it.

I ended up on a little flat bench with gnarly bedrock all around me. There were Little patches of gravels everywhere with extremely large amounts of black sand. Some of the very purest I've ever seen. Luckily for me there were fines peppered in them. Since I wasn't sure what I would be getting into I only brought a pan and classifier. I wish I had a catch pan or bucket... snuffer ing micron gold out of large piles of magnetite is not fun. My bad for not packing my magnet that would have helped immensely.

Meanwhile Courtney is coming down the bank some 20ft up with pans of material and he's showing great color ever pan. I went up the bedrock and tried to find and dig the material he was working. But i only came down with a pan full of dust and old dead poison oak leaves,no gold and decided to just poke around on my own.

Courtney is showing great pans at least a dozen of them i saw. He's coming down with some choice material and loses balance. Like a ninja, he cought himself but the gold pan went right Into a major rapid we were wotking right above. Looked like he wanted to jump in after it but choose wisely and just looked to see if it would pop up, but it was gone.

I found this odd little patch of flat bedrock that had about 1 maybe 2 inches of gravel on it with large flat angular rocks on top. I tossed the big ones and scraped the material off the bedrock with my hands. From my experience the best material is , extremely flat flakes that lay right on the berock. But it was so full of magnetite one hand full of material resulted in 1 large pile of solid black sand. Impossible to efficiently get the fines out. With no Catch pan I got what I could and threw the rest back to grow up.

All in all a great day with good company. And some gold in my pocket!

I'm sure SchoolOfHardRocks cleanout will blow mine out of the water. Which goes to show you most of the time it come down to techniques and he looked like he knew what he was doing! Can't wait to see it!

 

[mytimetoshine]

Met up with Golden Mojo and went to my little honey hole.

With Joe's help we made it all the way down the rd. Thanks Joe!

Water was down and I had to build up the dam by chucking about 50 large cobble to divert some if the flow. Luckily no shortage of larger rock. Joe headed down stream to unknown diggings.

I also had to clear some vegetation to make the area comfy. All in all I probably spent 45 min setting up my area for maximum efficiency.

Had the prospector set almost perfect and shoveled for 3 st hrs
2 cleanouts, no sign of Joe.

I decided it was time to make sure he was OK. So while eating my sandwhich (that I did not forget) I made my way downstream. Bam right away Joe surfaces and was on his way back himself. Nice.

Joe sampled around my dig while I forced my self to keep digging but I was gassed. Dug as much as I could for the next hr and then we packed it up. Beautiful day and the pay streak is on schedule. 3 cleanouts 4 hrs of digging time.

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Dude you are killing it

 

[Aufisher]

Nice work guys! Leave some for me lol!

 

[Jeff95531]

Nicely done gentelmen! Getting grams in a day? Priceless (well...almost)

 

[shofs]

One day I'm going to get a gram in one day mark my words! Honestly you are setting the sluice bar so high those are like dredging weights. I just need 10 hours, 2 sandwiches and I'll be there!

 

[mytimetoshine]

One day I'm going to get a gram in one day mark my words! Honestly you are setting the sluice bar so high those are like dredging weights. I just need 10 hours, 2 sandwiches and I'll be there!

I think if one were to hit this area with a decent size dredge you could do an ounce a day..maybe not but it would be close that's for sure...

To bad I'll probably never know...sigh

 

[KevinInColorado]

One day I'm going to get a gram in one day mark my words! Honestly you are setting the sluice bar so high those are like dredging weights. I just need 10 hours, 2 sandwiches and I'll be there!

My peak visit to Straw Creek was 1.25 grams is less than 2 hours...you'll find a spot like that!

 

[mytimetoshine]

One day I'm going to get a gram in one day mark my words!

Especially with that attitude...lol. Seriously Shofs, thats the attitude I've approached gold mining with and it takes all that and more to succeed. I'm still learning and pushing the bar every day. Baby steps... Just Analize your digs and results .Test pan everywhere, the good the bad and the ugly. Don't be a gold snob.. Some of the best gold I find is in areas most everyone else would not look twice at.

The area I'm working has overburden,cobble and lots of tree roots. It's a low grade deposit.. All super fines...when I fist sampled it I was walking the bank with a pan and hand pick axe. I scooped up some random material amongst the vegatation, where I could see obvious flood debris and got 4-5 small speck per pan. Very small but consistent... Took another pan..same result. Took another same... I started looking around and realized I had super easy place to sluice no matter the water level which gives it a huge plus and steady pay.... Probably several hundred yards at a minimum........

Don't over look low grade deposits... And don't chase nuggets

Cheers

 

[shofs]

Thats some strong support! Got to love this forum you guys are the best, especially coming from the big guns lol. I've only been serious about prospecting for under a year and only had my bazooka for about 2 months now so I'm still in the stage where ANY color in my pan is awesome! I just like to set goals to celebrate I'm happy to say I met my -30 mesh goal, then recently got my -10 mesh goal and the next one can only be the legendary "gram in one day" . I do consider myself lucky and proud to be getting an average of .10g per hour at least!

 

[goldenmojo]

Met up with Golden Mojo and went to my little honey hole.

With Joe's help we made it all the way down the rd. Thanks Joe!

Water was down and I had to build up the dam by chucking about 50 large cobble to divert some if the flow. Luckily no shortage of larger rock. Joe headed down stream to unknown diggings.

I also had to clear some vegetation to make the area comfy. All in all I probably spent 45 min setting up my area for maximum efficiency.

Had the prospector set almost perfect and shoveled for 3 st hrs
2 cleanouts, no sign of Joe.

I decided it was time to make sure he was OK. So while eating my sandwhich (that I did not forget) I made my way downstream. Bam right away Joe surfaces and was on his way back himself. Nice.

Joe sampled around my dig while I forced my self to keep digging but I was gassed. Dug as much as I could for the next hr and then we packed it up. Beautiful day and the pay streak is on schedule. 3 cleanouts 4 hrs of digging time.

Great Work Buddy. Had a blast sampling and working pockets of rusty gravel! Your spot is definitely lousy with gold and as always an adventure. Need to get my chores done and get out with you again.

 

[mytimetoshine]

been a little behind on the updates but I was able to get out with SchoolOfHardknocks few days back and he met me near my house where he jumped in my truck and we headed for the spot.

Think we were on the river by 9 -930. Water keeps dropping so the dam rebuilding is constant.

I started into my dig and noticed the going was getting tuffer. The tree roots are thick and I could no longer effectively shovel straight in to the Bazooka. instead I shoveled into my pan and then carried the pan down to the sluice. Since the roots were getting thick and slowing me down I decided to attack the pay streak from another angle but proved to be equally as tuff to dig but was a much closer haul.

Courtney set up his folding sluice and worked about 100 ft up river on the other side of the creek. we didn't see another soul all day.

I struggled to move the quantity of material needed to hit that 1g + mark. tuff going and I think I was just a little tired. I should have gone after so some easier diggings close by that I'm sure still have good gold. I'm working higher bank material so as the water drops the dynamics of the dig will change. next time I go here I'm going to see what the easier material holds.

Had a great time with School of hard knocks. Glad you made it out, I know it was a long drive for you.

Looks like the rivers are dropping fast now. Time to snipe!

 

[Au dave]

sounds like a good trip and the gold total nothing to turn away from..I'm so envious of you guys in the northern hemisphere as its too cold to do anything here in S.E. Aust. and the waterways have been flooding every weekend for the past 3 weeks, hopefully some scrub has been bashed down to give me easier access in spring...heavy pans

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk

 

[shofs]

Over half a gram is a good day out no matter what! On a side note how old is your pan? The bottom of it is so spotted with wear it looks camo

 

[mytimetoshine]

Over half a gram is a good day out no matter what! On a side note how old is your pan? The bottom of it is so spotted with wear it looks camo

LOL. It's only 3 years old but it's seen its fair share of work. Those splotches you see is just the way I received it. I've seen a few others with the same manufacturer defect. I'm so used to seeing it, I forget it's like that.

 

[Asmbandits]

Nice looking gold and sounds like a good trip!

 

[mytimetoshine]

I'm still a week or so behind on the thread but we had a good time camping RV at Collins lake again this year. lake was full but we managed to catch the only 4 days of the last month where the sun just wouldn't come out. One day was pretty windy and another it actually rained a bit over night! wth...

While here last year I had planned to test the feeder creek for the lake but never got around to it. This year I went to check it out and it was 40 ft under water..lol.

Then I noticed a small construction area where they had dug with an excavator and piled up some nice looking dirt. so of course I filled a pan and took it down to the lake. a little black sand and 2 micron pieces of gold. I almost started filling up my truck bed ( not really ) with paydirt until it dawned on me that I didn't really clean my pan out and it may have been a contaminated sample. I gave the pan a thorough cleaning and tested again.... nothing.. darn.

They did also have some sorted gravels and sand that was piled up but I didn't mess with it as it obvious they paid for that material for use in some construction or maintenance.

fun trip with the family and at least I got to test out my knew kayak on the lake!

 

[mytimetoshine]

Last Friday I took a Vacation day and headed out fairly early. Instead of going where I've been lately I decided to switch things up and Check out a different area. I've worked the area before but not this year yet.

I spied a large outcrop of bedrock surrounded by some shallow ponds. looked like a likely spot and I was in no mood to go any farther then I had to as it was a high 90s day. and there is VERY little shade here.

Started sampling high, low off the bedrock, in the muck, in the roots left, right lol and nothing but 1 or 2 sub 100 mesh from heaping pans classified to 1/4. Not very promising so I started thinking of moving on but I try not to do that. when your on a major river in mother load country there are very few spots where there is NO GOLD. it's just up to you to figure out where it is and almost as important as way to effective collect it.

Finally while walking by a bedrock trough filled with uninteresting gravel I saw just about a 6 inch section of hard pack sticking to the side wall just at the gravel line.

took a quick pan and BAM! probably 6 nice flakes. they seemed extra large to me to because I've been working small stuff for a few months and haven't been seeing anything chunky.

As I stumbled all over myself racing back to get another pan I noticed football size solid iron chunk stuck in the the mix so I pried it out and turned it over, it had all kinds of rusty ancient material stuck to it!. I broke off a chunk of it to take home...

I worked that trough for almost 3 hrs before I was whipped and packed out.

.5g on the head and a bunch of mercury which actually looks really cool under the scope.

Is it just me or does everyone else see the ghost face piece? it's kinds creeping me out lol