You have to go to the beach with a bit of a plan, if you go wandering all over the place, chances are that you will not find much at all, considering the total area of the beach. I tend to re-visit areas that are well populated during daylight hours, hence hopefully replentish the sand with a few dropped coins and other items. I also grid up the beach so I don't miss anything, mainly just in the more busy areas like near jettys and entrances to the beach. If when wondering down less populated areas of the beach, and you come across a coin or two, I will generally stop and grid the area up until I am satisfied that they were just isolated drops, and not because it was a heavily populated area,
Less populated areas are more hit and miss, sometimes you can go there and not find a thing, usually due to recently deposited sand covering up any recent drops. Other times you can go back to the same area, and the beach has been eroded away, exposing patches of coins.
At low tide, also try along the shelly stuff at the bottom of the beach, sometimes coins will pop up between this area of the beach down to the tidal flats. You will know if you are in the right area if you start to pick up a few 5c coins, then move further towards the ocean, and larger more heavy coins will follow. The rise and fall of the tide tends to grade items by their mass or weight, move too high up in the wet sand and you will tend to get lighter items like pull tabs and bottle caps.
You will need to reduce the sensitivity enough to cut excessive chatter and falsing when in wet sand, plus run in basic discrimination mode, notching out iron, this will also help in wet sand. In the dry, just run in all-metal mode and dig everything, as you don't want to miss out on any jewellery. The only downside is digging more foil and aluminium, but those items are really few and far between compared to working places like parks.
Look for areas of recent disturbances like towel marks, kids making sandcastles and digging holes, areas around boat ramps onto the beach - basically anywhere where you may think that there is a possibility of people dropping items. Even at the base of sandhill where you get people snogging each other at night, another good spot for stuff to fall out. Also don't forget grassed areas on the way back to the car, plenty of people drop stuff when cleaning off sand before re-entering their cars.
A VLF detector will always be limited depth wise when it comes to the beach, especially in wet sand, hence why I have a PI detector to get those real deep items that my Ace has no chance of reaching. A larger coil may also be beneficial in this case for the 705, maybe something like the Coiltek WOT coil in the dry sand.
