How would YOU tackle this spot?

[Goldagettin]

Hi to All,

We found this little creek yesterday but didn't have the time to do any panning. I'm just wondering how you guys would go about digging this area of it.

It's about 12-18 inches of water over around 12-18 inches of sand and gravel with what seems to be a solid bedrock bottom. The sides are large rocks, some partly buried into the bank and there are crevices everywhere. Then there is the elephant in the room.... or in this case a bloody huge rock smack in the middle of the pool.

Do I just try the most likely spots first? or run it all. Do I try and move the rock? Do I move the rocks around the edge of the pool to proses under them as well. Or do I just run every grain that in there?

Your advice is greatly required and appreciated.

Here are a couple of the other spots I want to work as well.

cheers

 

[slowflow]

Crevice a couple of places where you think the water flow slows. Sample to bedrock in gravel inside bends & behind big rocks or any other slower flow area you spot . Hope you get a bucket full.

 

[rc62burke]

Sample the best looking area's Like Slow flow mentioned any spot where the gold will drop out, the bigger rocks should be sitting on the bottom, you need to prove the spot before you put in hours of work.
Lee

 

[Paydirt]

Looks juicy all over

 

[dwt]

Hey mate, from looking at the last pic you can see at the direction of the creek, first place i would look is right at the back edge of the over size pile of rock, working my way towards left side of the pic, from looking at the right hand side of the pic you can see how the water is deeper than the left and has less gravels, usually means when the creek gets some volume and speed it will be speeding up in that section, i would leave the small gravelly section( from the over size back up to bedrock) for last if there is any gold in that section it has most likely been hammerd to the crap house, small pebbels built up can mean small gold......
Some people mite disagree with this approach i can only pass on what i have learnt from digging locally,hope this helps
good luck mate

 

[G0lddigg@]

looks good mate, id start by sampling the gravel bar if theres gold there i would expect fine gold deposited here. THen i'd remove some of the larger rocks and get down to bedrock to see if there's any course gold. theres so many places there for gold to dropout

 

[dwt]

PS....if you move any large rocks put them back in the same spot if gold collected under there once it will do it again, its an easy way to continue to catch gold time after time......

 

[G0lddigg@]

PS....if you move any large rocks put them back in the same spot if gold collected under there once it will do it again, its an easy way to continue to catch gold time after time......

of course put it back to the way you found it .... dwt is right of course its like farming you keep coming back after every big downpoor

 

[Goldagettin]

Thank you all for your input.

Yeah it is a great looking spot, I'm not sure how flogged it has been. We searched for a while and could find no sign of previous action, but it was a hard slog to get to it through very unfriendly scrub. The biggest question still remains , if it has any golden glitter in it or not..... It's the type of creek that only flows after BIG rain, that area had 250-280mm in around 17 hours only 3 days before the pics were taken so in a few days it wont be flowing at all.

I think I'll take some of the advice you guys gave and go back and just test the crap out of it first and make a plan of attack based on the results.

I almost get giddy just looking at the pics, can't wait to get back there and play around

Thanks again guys

 

[Goldtarget]

Pic 4 (second last) is a beauty, if you can prove the spot. All good advice above, and i like that pic due to the bedrock angles where the chunky stuff will get jammed in for you to find, but you mayfind the best value in in your gravels and highbanking for volume, over kneeling and scraping on those hard uneven sufaces, so as stated above, prove the creek, do some solid sampling and decide your attack from there. If rain is likely to come and its enough to start pushing things around think about getting it out from the gravel bars etc, the flood deposits, as these may go but the crevicing and bedrock deposits will wait for you till your ready. I hope you find bucket loads, looks like a primo spot.

 

[TenOunce Tone]

Sample the beds. Go to different depths. Get into a few crevices and see what comes out. Check for fractures in the rocks that are along the bank. If so see if you can open these up.

Lots of potential there for you. Good luck with it

Cheers,Tone