I don't know if others are finding more but more people are taking up the hobby of prospecting!
As far as you finding gold, go to you tube and see if people in your area have posted any videos if not look for areas near you. And check out some about panning for gold and watch them and see if you are doing the panning right or go to www.GoldProspectors.com and see if they have any videos on this. Panning has to be done right or you may pour your gold out you don't pour you stratify, the dirt to get the gold to the bottom of your pan (Fill your pan about half full with gold bearing dirt and water covering the dirt. Kneed the dirt like biscuit dough. Shake your pan and swirl keeping the pan level this gets the gold down to the bottom of your pan. Gold is 19.3 times heaver than water which is heaver than most everything else lead and garnet being about the closest thing to gold in weight). Then you use a swirling motion with your pan while tilting the pan just enough to let the lightest dirt float out of your pan after a little dirt floats out of your pan re-stratify your pan again to get the gold back to the bottom. You keep doing this until you see mostly black sand or other heavies then you will carefully pore off the water and get cleaner water just a little bit over the material in your pan. Holding your pan level gently swirl the water over the material in your pan, you want to barely move the material and if you have any lead, gold or other heavies (you may have semi precious stones in there) in your pan you will start to see the good stuff! Gold! (you can put some bird shot from a shotgun shell, or BB's in your dirt and see if you are keeping it in your pan when you finish panning it down to just black sand). I hope this will help you some? 
