why is it so?

The creek I've been going to lately seems to have all its gold in the top foot and a half of gravel, the deeper I go, the less there is. I can comfortably get a gram or more per day in the highbanker.

Just not sure if it's worth digging all the way to bedrock, despite what a lot of the experts say.

traced further up the creek for the source?

Well my conclusion would be the gold has been placed there in recent floods , hopefully very recent as that proposes a great chance of tracing the gold upstream to its source , but recent could mean 50/80 years ago also.
The deeper gravels have quite simply been there longer so either they were processsed back in the gold rushes or possibly were placed there in a time period when there were no activily shedding reefs upstream.
If the bedrock has never been cleaned in history there would be a good chance of gold being on it as the gold has filtered down out of the gravels you are finding at 2ft deep.
Gold in the top gravels makes life easy so your on a winner :Y:

malri_au said:

traced further up the creek for the source?

Click to expand...

Yeah.... can imagine some big weather event scouring out the bank upstream further a bit... but where you are its widened/and or on the inner bend where the waters slowed and dropped a new top floor with all those goodies onboard ,..... coulda just been that it scoured out an old natural trap.... or... coulda taken the edge outa an old gold filled creek/deep lead. Either way, like Malri says... worth further investigation :Y:

thanks guys

Im glad Im not the only one finding this. All my best pans have been pulled from coarse deposits in logical drop zones (behind boulders, trailing inside bends), well above the current water levels. So far so good.

But it doesnt seem to matter where I sample, I get a few specks per pan from the surface. Then when I work an area, it either fades out as I get deeper, or holds bigger bits from the top 20cm then it fades out. If I keep digging down I hit a heavy grey/blue clay layer thats tough to break up and wash, but has a lot of fine flakes in it. The return to effort ratio drops way off.

My thought is that these spots are near the high water mark of steady winter flow, which shifts the coarse sand and gravel but doesnt carry much gold. The coarser gold has been flushed down by flash flooding. So Im slowly working my way upstream, hoping to hit spots where more chunky bits get stuck. If that doesnt pay, Ill start again where the chunky gold sits on the top, and take the surface layer off the whole dang lot. Thatll keep me busy until Christmas... 2020.

jamiealdridge said:

The creek I've been going to lately seems to have all its gold in the top foot and a half of gravel, the deeper I go, the less there is. I can comfortably get a gram or more per day in the highbanker.

Just not sure if it's worth digging all the way to bedrock, despite what a lot of the experts say.

Click to expand...

I live in the area you are prospecting and came across a spot that was very similar. Pulled two grams of gold and all of it within two feet of the surface. At the time I thought the gold I was getting may have washed down from an a pile of old alluvial wash.