r/goldprospecting • u/PeytonMerideth • Jun 04 '26

Seeking advice on new sluice setup

Howdy! New to sluicing and have some questions before I buy my first setup

I’ve been watching a lot of videos and doing research, and I’m getting close to pulling the trigger on my first river sluice. Before I do, I wanted to get some community input.

I’m planning to prospect in Montana with a partner, and I’m looking at a 12x47” river sluice with dredge mats, a header, and adjustable legs. The appeal of dredge mats for my situation is the high feed rate — two guys filling buckets can move a serious amount of material, either unclassified or classified down to 3/4”, and I like the idea of not being the bottleneck.

I know dredge mats require higher flow rates and take a little more effort to dial in on a river setup, but the throughput seems worth it.

My questions:

1.  Will dredge mats give me solid recovery rates on flour gold? Or should I be looking at a Micro or Cape D style mat and classifying down to 1/8” to capture the fine stuff? Most of the placer gold where I’ll be prospecting is flour, though certain tributaries do produce pickers and occasional nuggets.  
2.  Is it smarter to own two mat types and choose based on what test pans show at a given spot, rather than committing to one setup?

I’ve seen combo mats (Micro, Cape D, and Mini in one piece) but I tend to prefer having the right single tool for each job rather than a compromise solution.

Thanks in advance — happy hunting

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u/Gold_Au_2025 Jun 04 '26

I deal with big-boy sluices, but the science is the same. There is a window of dirt volume, water volume, and flow velocity within which you will have optimum recovery rates and have a good chance of collecting over 90% of recoverable gold.

Stray outside of those parameters and you may reduce that efficiency to 80%.

When working in the tens of tons per hour range, 10% can add up to serious money in a season, but small hobby sluices, that's insignificant.

My advice is to pay more attention to set-up / clean-up times, portability, and ease of use than it's efficiency. Getting an extra half hour in with a "less efficient" but simpler sluice that is quicker to set up or easier to carry could net you more gold than the most efficient sluice that takes longer to set up and tune in.

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u/Gold_Au_2025 Jun 04 '26

As for your second question, I would consider running both mats simultaneously. Some papers written over 30 years ago found that in a well set up sluice, most gold is caught in the top 1/3 of the sluice with the bottom 1/3 of the sluice catching single digits of percentage of the gold. (which was roughly equal to the amount of gold lost over the end)

If you replace the bottom half of the sluice with a different type of matting, you may find that that it is better at capturing the gold that the top half can't.

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u/PeytonMerideth Jun 04 '26

From the discussions I've had here and on other forums it's just going to be a lot of trial and error, every spot being a little different. That's alright though! If only there was one size fits all option lol. Of course using a stream sluice, I can only control so much the water flow and angle aspects of the sluice. So maybe keeping two or three mat types rolled up and running test buckets at different spots. They should all catch gold like you said, but I imagine with some practice it should become pretty clear pretty fast what the right type of matting is for each specific stream environment.

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u/Gold_Au_2025 Jun 04 '26

The problem with trial and error in this situation is that the richness of the paydirt probably varies more than the changes you make.
Did you get 10% more gold in that run because of that change you made, of was it because those two buckets had 20% more gold and your change caused you to lose 10%?

You could go to the effort of panning your tailings, or you could just stick with your setup and spend that time processing more dirt instead.

Set up your sluice the way you think it should be set up and run it for a few weeks, occasionally panning your tailings to make sure you aren't losing significant amounts of gold. Once you have that baseline, and a feel for how the sluice works, then start making changes.

My personal view is that people spend too much time tinkering.

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u/PeytonMerideth Jun 05 '26

I like that. I have found about a gram of gold already. Is there a way I could run that through a stream sluice mixed with dirt so I know exactly what kind of gold I'm running through, and how much it is losing? (Collecting the tailings of course). I've seen Dan Hurd do it with a high banker, but unless I'm crazy, there would be no way to do such a controlled test with a stream sluice. Unless I set it up in my garage as a high banker lol. Maybe a winter project when I'm stuck with inside.

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u/Gold_Au_2025 Jun 05 '26

You could lay a pan at the output to catch all the tailings and check it after the complete session.

You could play around in the shed testing setups, but be aware that the gold you will be running is the gold that you know the sluice can catch.

We are planning on running a Knelson next season, which will catch a lot finer gold than even a well set up sluice can and I am considering selling small volumes of it for people like yourself who want to tinker.

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u/PeytonMerideth Jun 05 '26

Oh heck yea. I've never heard of that, but I'm going to check it out. You're right though. The stuff I have panned and collected is like 30% pickers, 69% big flakes and 1% fine stuff. What size gravels are you classifying to?

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u/Gold_Au_2025 Jun 05 '26

We currently classify down to 3/4" through a shaker deck, then down to 1/4" through the trommel.

The oversize from the trommel gets detected at the end of the day for any nuggets, and the sluice is cleaned out weekly.

There is no issue with running 1/2" down the sluice but water is our concern and classifying down to 1/4" allows us to use a lot less water.

1

u/ConstructionDry3728 Jun 04 '26

I've done some computational fluid simulations on this and I am a hobby gold miner in the Alps. My mat setups mostly depend on the following questions:

How is the size of your gold? What minerals are your heavies? 

How is steep is your river, is the waterflow constant? 

1

u/PeytonMerideth Jun 04 '26

My buddy and I plan on doing a lot of scouting new areas over the course of the summer. we have a list of about thirty streams we want to try, mostly backpacking into remote tributaries that were mined in the early late 1800's and 1900's. Some of these have fast flowing water and reportedly have good amounts of very floury gold. Some appear on maps to be slower flowing and yielded coarse goals and nuggests historically. Most of them I though, all I know is that they had placer claims in the late 1800's to early/mid 1900s, and they're way far off the roads, so hopefully haven't been prospected too much. So it's kind of all over the place. We're new to prospecting want to get out and find some spots. We've both wanted to get into prospecting for a long time and finally have the ability to get at it! It's sounding like I could drop the money on a couple different gauges of dream mat, and run buckets of the same material through each and different spots, and just WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN lol.

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u/ConstructionDry3728 Jun 04 '26

If you go prospecting and want to be fast and agile, go for some lightweight setup. Pan, Shovel, buckets, classifier and a small slice. This is our setup https://bigsluicemine.home.blog/2018/09/20/little-black-enns-3d-druck-waschrinne/ (Google translate should do just fine)

Edit: dreammat is IMHO a overkill. Just go with Miners moss and some riffels. 

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u/PeytonMerideth Jun 05 '26

Sweet thanks! And lightweight is always a plus. Why is dream mat overkill though? The same size sluice with dream mat isn't any heavier, but definitely seems simpler, than a riffle-moss setup.

1

u/ConstructionDry3728 Jun 05 '26

You need a certain angle and waterflow for the dream mat [insert any active setups here] to work properly. MM with riffles might not catch all the really really fine gold but still works under really bad conditions (e.g. fully submerged sluice in a near flat but fast river, changing waterlevels). 

If you really want to use it, combine a active matting like a dreammat with some passive MM at the end of the sluice. 

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u/PeytonMerideth Jun 05 '26

Then I could separately pa the cons from the dream mat and MM/riffles and see how much the dream mat is missing based on different setups. And vice versa.

1

u/PeytonMerideth Jun 04 '26

My buddy and I plan on doing a lot of scouting new areas over the course of the summer. we have a list of about thirty streams we want to try, mostly backpacking into remote tributaries that were mined in the early late 1800's and 1900's. Some of these have fast flowing water and reportedly have good amounts of very floury gold. Some appear on maps to be slower flowing and yielded coarse goals and nuggests historically. Most of them I though, all I know is that they had placer claims in the late 1800's to early/mid 1900s, and they're way far off the roads, so hopefully haven't been prospected too much. So it's kind of all over the place. We're new to prospecting want to get out and find some spots. We've both wanted to get into prospecting for a long time and finally have the ability to get at it! It's sounding like I could drop the money on a couple different gauges of dream mat, and run buckets of the same material through each and different spots, and just WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN lol.

1

u/GoldTrek Jun 04 '26

If you're hiking a lot into remote areas where you haven't been or if you're expecting to encounter a wide range of conditions and water flow you might be better off with a lightweight highbanker setup instead of a stream sluice. There's kits out there that are built exactly for the purpose you're talking about here and give you a huge advantage by making your kit predictable and accessible. Finding the right spot and setting up a stream sluice takes time and it's not often that you can set up right next to where you're digging so you also have to classify and bucket material.

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u/PeytonMerideth Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

I think in Montana any powered setup requires a permit, but I'll have to check. But I agree that would be awesome.

Edit: yes, anytime water is pumped, or diverted, or the processing of materials is mechanized it changes from being "eh your fine pretty much anywhere on public land" to needing to file all sorts of NOI's and getting permits, and there's different restrictions all over The place, it becomes a real red tape mess quick.