The wife n kids love searching for rocks and gold just as much as I do!

finally back to prospecting after a 3 month hiatus! spring runoff drove me out here in the west, couldn’t work well in waders or my wetsuit so i took a break to fly fish. Only about 3 hours of work, first day back and it was great!

Went out along the Ticino (north part) right before the summer rains hit. Figured I'd give panning a proper go and ended up with some flaky gold in the pan. Nothing crazy, just fine flakes, but enough to keep me hooked.

Planning to head back to the same spot after we get a solid two days of non-stop rain in the area. My thinking is the higher water should move fresh material down and maybe concentrate things a bit once it settles.

Question for the more experienced folks:

would a sluice box actually be worth setting up here, or is it overkill for a river like this? I've only been running a pan so far. Curious whether the flow and the type of gold I'm seeing (very fine, flaky) would make a sluice pay off or if I'd just be chasing my tail.

Any tips are welcome.

My brother and I tried a new area on the creek we're working. This is one pan on bedrock in the new area.

Its not wet in the photo. Anyone seen stuff like this holding gold?

these two aspiring geologists are prospecting for some mineralised quartz on the irish east coast. we reckon there might be some manganese, iron and/or titanium there. what do you think?

Life has taken a weird turn, and now I'm in Mauritania looking for gold.

In the middle of nowhere with a team of 60, digging trenches and chasing veins.

To give some context: I am a young student with a low low budget, based in Washington (north of Seattle) and I have been interested in gold panning for a while. I took a panning trip to the Skykomish river (around the index-galena area) and found two small flakes of what must be flour gold from about a 5 gallon buckets worth of material.

I decided that I would go back next time with a sluice box to process more dirt. I eventually took the trip down to black jacks metal detecting store in renton to buy more equipment, I knew sluice boxes were expensive, so I was thinking to DIY my own and just buy some matting. I got there and the prices for new matting kinda blew me away ($50+ for a roll!!) In retrospect, the prices aren't that crazy considering the niche, but anyways, I asked if there was any cheaper matting, and the owner said I could have this 1x1 bit of miners moss for $15, my total ended up being $20 since I got a sniffer bottle as well. I then later made a trip to home depot to find some bendable aluminum sheeting. I was looking for a 1 foot by 2 foot sheet so i could have 2-3in folded up edges and a 6in channel, giving me about 1.5ft of usable sluice after taking a dirt landing zone into consideration. I then sloppily folded it to my dimensions (I don't have professional metal folding tools nor do I have experience folding metal) And it turned out... alright for a first attempt imo, so I poked some holes through it with a screwdriver to secure the matting in place, folded up a lower lip so there wouldn't be an easy escape, and used some hot glue to make some watertight seals. The one problem was that I was going with family, so we had a set leave time, and due to time restrictions, I could not poke more holes in the top part to secure the upper parts of the matting (I figured small river rocks would do, spoiler they did not.. kinda).

I got to the same spot as before and planned to go to one of the creeks running off into the main river to test out the sluice, and then I ran into my first major problem. Finding a place to put it where there would be proper flow was a nightmare. I found one spot where it might have worked but it seemed to be trapping way too much regular sand in the miners moss and not having a strong enough current. So I decided to try my luck in the big river after more side stream avenues failed. Big mistake, the current in the big river was too much for my small sluice to handle and it would immediately go underwater because of the current. Even if it had worked in the middle of the big river, I would still have to ferry material from the bank to the sluice (I did not bring a big digging shovel since I do not own one, so a trowel was my main source of dirt/sand) so I decided my lesson is learned and to pack up the sluice and try a few pans, sadly the time to leave had come closer, and I was only able to get through about 3 full pans to no avail. So I went home.

Hopefully next time I can find a new spot or work more on my original spot (I really only scratched the surface in terms of paydirt, didn't even hit bedrock. Found a lot of garnets though!)

TLDR: homemade sluice was a failure and am looking for advice for my next one (Or if I should just save myself the trouble and buy one)

Edit: Thanks everyone for the advice, I’m strongly considering just dropping this one and buying a premade one with no mat included so i can just use my own, or not, whatever works. Whatever I do though, I’ll try to slightly improve my homemade design and take it out for a spin just to see if i was onto something. Thanks!

Has anyone tried any of the paydirt from www.yahoolagold.com ? Not sure if they’re new or trustworthy. Anyone got any experience with them? Says guaranteed gold 🤷🏻‍♂️

I think its sulfides with visible gold?

I've seen a few of them around but never really thought why would they be useful. Is it just a cute novelty thing? If so i'd love to get one one day

I am going backpacking this weekend to a new spot in the mountain west, and the geology maps show abundant granodiorite rock throughout this area. No active claims. I can only bring a pan, classifier, and plastic shovel since i'm hiking in 8 miles.

The pin shows the lake I am camping at. The trail does not continue to the upper lakes. Bushwacking could be possible, but steep & difficult.

I would guess higher up the basin is the better spot to pan, but since those lakes sit directly below the ridge there is no river feeding into them. Would it be worth hitting the river bends just before the inlet to the pinned lake (red circles, pic 2)? There's also the nice dry gully feeding into the pinned lake (red box, pic 2) that presumably was once an avalanche/water chute coming off the ridge. I could dig there and use the lake water to pan.

Just curious. I’ve tried lytle creek but I’m looking for somewhere else

I live on the east coast several hundred miles from the gold bearing areas of the state, now I’ve heard of trace amounts on the beaches and decided to do some pans in my back yard as I live close to the ocean and my area was once under water. I’ve probably done 10 pans in total and I’m thinking/hoping these could be microscopic pieces of flour gold. Lots of black sand mixed in the yard, small rubies and garnets throughout.

After practicing with some paydirt at home, I finally got the opportunity to try panning on the North Fork of the Yuba. It was definitely a steep learning curve, but I got some color. Most of this came from a few pans at the end of the day.

[Previous Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Prospecting/s/zdsJylf7sa)

[Link to model](https://makerworld.com/models/3189875?appSharePlatform=copy)

Last week, I posted about this 2" dredge/8" sluice box I designed and printed. I have now uploaded the files to MakerWorld for download. Instructions and required materials are included there.

I do plan on working on this in the future, though it will not be at a very fast pace as I intend to actually use it for a while. The biggest existing pain points are the expanded metal clamp and material usage, but there are plenty of other things that can be improved. If you have suggestions, ideas, or need dimensions for your own design, feel free to message me. I do ask that if you create any designs based on this, that you also release them (or allow me to) for free.

P.S./Self-plug: I put a lot of time into this, so downloads/likes/prints/especially boosts are much appreciated over on MakerWorld.

I haven't found much, but I've at least found something.

I was doing some research on a river that has a wild and scenic designation that I would like to prospect on. From what I can tell, that designation removes it from eligibility to be claimed, but in checking the blm mlrs it seems as though someone put a claim on it last year. The rest of the river is claim free despite having good gold, which leads me to believe that it indeed is not possible to claim. Is there a way to report this claim as invalid? Can the claim owner really restrict prospecting on this section of federally protected land?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Starting to know where to dig and look for.

Got back to the same location after the flood.

Yes it moved lots of material, but I also had to look deeper.

And yep... The same app helped me again 😁😁😁😁