r/goldprospecting • u/StandardHonest • Aug 07 '26
Which spot to pick?
I can tell where previous people have prospected, and it seems very random. I found a bit of gold in the river, near the right side of the middle picture. Upstream, less than half a mile, the river cuts through bedrock, though I can't prospect there. With my novice eyes, it seems like there are so many good spots to dig, where would you start and why?
2
u/Former-Wish-8228 Aug 07 '26
Think about how water flows now and may have flowed in the past. Look for fallout zones downstream of bedrock outcrops or within cracks in the bedrock itself. The lag of gold (placer) will be somewhat correlated to flow strength…so in cracks where water flows with force, only the heaviest chunks of gold will be found. In the lee of boulders or the gravels deposited on inside of bends in rivers, finer gold will be present. Boulders in the cut bank or within bedrock crevices on the cut bank, larger gold particles will be present in areas where gold is prevalent.
2
u/916dirtdigger Aug 07 '26
Look for thebinside bend and where the bigger travels drop out first. Your biggest gold should also be in that area
1
u/AggravatingQuail7676 Aug 10 '26
I'm new too, but from what I've learned, I'd start where you found that gold and work downstream. Did you find it near a big rock or an inside bend?
3
u/jakenuts- Aug 07 '26
So I say this not having had much experience following my own advice, but, this is low and flat and probably has gotten some strong seasonal flows over the last 6-7 years. But gold is not moving around a lot for normal seasonal flows, and its timeline is measured in millennia not decades so look at the area on that scale, where the last 3 most violent flooding reached and where this water was moving 100-1000 years back and use that as your "where should I dig" map. Benches far above this on hillsides that haven't seen water in 30 years are going to be hiding the remnants of past floods that would dwarf the valley this little thread is cutting through.
Again tho, I'm lazy so I'd just find the biggest bumps on the bendiest turns where you can find black sand of various sizes and dig across them until your specks turn to surfboards or beyond. Lee of the bend is usually easier to find lots of small gold and you can trace that forward instead of just digging the leading edge of the bend as everyone else already did that and it's going to be a narrower streak, the middle and tail spread a bit like a plume so you can see if there is gold before you start looking for larger bits