Beach hunting question from a turf hunter...

[sgoss66]

dewcon, by "ratio" are you talking ratio of junk to good targets? Like for every 100 digs in dry sand, 1 will be a coin, jewelry piece, whatever? Not sure what ratio you refer to.

Yes, the Infinium I have borrowed has waterproof phones, I think...it has two sets, a blue, and a black Garrett pair. Not sure. It also has the 8" mono coil. But wow...it is HARD to get used to, so far. I have learned a few things, SLOW sweep speed. LONG sweeps over a target are needed, no "Minelab wiggle" here. LONG sweeps, for proper signal on a target. But still, wow. Tough to get used to.

I think the SE Pro is going to be the way to go, for me...

Steve

 

[pasttom]

Hi Steve,
Dew is right on. I've used PIs for years on a beach I know well and I do well, but the learning curve has been pretty high. On a beach you don't know its a huge gamble that I would not take. A PI on a dirty/iron/trash heavy beach is pure heck! An explorer, Sovereign, Excal, CTX can shine on almost any beach.

 

[Daniel Tn]

Most of the gulf beaches have tractor pulled beach cleaners that go across the dry sand. They smooth out the foot prints, sand castles, etc and pick up anything recently lost or discarded in the dry. You can still find stuff but a lot of times you will go quite a ways without a signal. If you concentrate around the "rent a chairs" the tractors can't close to those and you might find some things. Most likely your best bet is in the water. Gulf Beaches do have an abundance of jellyfish so beware of that. I recommend water shoes or dive booties.

 

[Ron Lord]

the beach rakes do clean up a lot of trash, but leave Rings, chains and coins. And as far as jellyfish go's, they are here only once and awhile. I live here in FLA Gulf coast year round. The moon jellyfish was here last week and now they are gone. If you don't live here ,don't talk like you do !!

 

[sgoss66]

Thanks all, for the advice.

I will stick with the Explorer this trip. I have had a hard time getting comfortable with the Infinium, and what it's trying to tell me. I will run with what I know, and increase the odds of finding a few targets a little. Not expecting much, as a novice beach hunter (if even that!)

Thanks!

Steve

 

[Flintstone]

Hi Junk, what do the clean up people do with the trash after they clean the beach? What I was thinking if they dump it some place you could detect it. Might be a good place. Have you ever ask them? Get to know one of the truck drivers and ask. Just thinking to myself, flintstone

 

[Ron Lord]

they dump it into a big metal can

 

[Flintstone]

OK, I just was thinking it might be a good place to hunt.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

No brainer Se Pro you only have 1 week down there so don't waste it trying to learn a new machine, especially the bobby pin king Infinium. Here's another reason to use the Se Pro, its excellent target ID will let you skip all the clad coins and concentrate on gold and silver. Leave the bazillion rotted zinc cents for others to clean up, skip the dimes too. Dig quarters for parking if you like, but keep moving and focus on gold signals and your odds of digging gold will skyrocket by not wasting most of your time digging modern coins.

Keep your Se Pro coil just off the wet sand, don't let it touch the sand, but keep it close to the wet sand. Smaller gold, gold chain crab claw clasps, and small jewelry like silver stud earrings you won't get much depth on them. Keep your coil flat at the end if your swings don't let it tip upwards else you may get a false.

Why avoid the dry sand? On the wet sand the ocean does some of the work for you, washing away the light weight bits of foil and trash. The dry sand will be a trash heap.

Here's the good news, the Se Pro dug all this gold

Here's the bad news, the Se Pro won't get a signal on gold this size even if you rub it on the coil. You likely will not dig any gold diamond stud earrings with the Se Pro. Big honker diamond solitaire rings with a thin gold band which orient stone down tipping the ring straight up on edge also unlikely with the Se Pro unless its flipping over in the surf line. Gold chains below a certain size also undetectable with the Se Pro. The Deus I have sitting on the charger in the kitchen however hits on all this gold below. TBD if it can handle the wet salt sand I may drive over to the coast to give it a try this weekend.

Dig pull tabs, one summer I dug 880 pull tabs and 1 gold ring that ID and sounded exactly like a pull tab, here she is a honker 1 carat that I sold for over $3,000

 

[sgoss66]

Charles --

Appreciate the info, and encouragement regarding the SE Pro. I knew it wouldn't do well on the smallest gold, or gold chains/bracelets (if no pendants attached). But, I knew it would be a respectable performer on many rings, while also (as you said) allowing me to skip some of the "undesirable" stuff. Meanwhile, thanks for the info regarding the wet sand -- just off the surface, but not touching, and particular attention to keeping the coil level at the end of the swings. I do that anyway (the "level coil" thing) -- it's a big focus of mine, but I'll be sure to be doubly attentive over the wet sand.

THANKS!

Steve

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Charles --

Appreciate the info, and encouragement regarding the SE Pro. I knew it wouldn't do well on the smallest gold, or gold chains/bracelets (if no pendants attached). But, I knew it would be a respectable performer on many rings, while also (as you said) allowing me to skip some of the "undesirable" stuff. Meanwhile, thanks for the info regarding the wet sand -- just off the surface, but not touching, and particular attention to keeping the coil level at the end of the swings. I do that anyway (the "level coil" thing) -- it's a big focus of mine, but I'll be sure to be doubly attentive over the wet sand.

THANKS!

Steve

Three more things quickly, if you touch the coil to wet seaweed on the wet sand it may false. If you are detecting along the edge of the surf, a wave flowing over your coil will cause a false, the electrically conductive salt water upsets the coil balance. If you are wading out in calm water its not an issue the auto ground balance deals with it.

Finally there are transition lines in the wet sand, from sopping wet, to wet, to damp. If you are detecting parallel to the water right on one of these transition lines basically the ground balance varies so much in a single swing you will get a false, the auto ground balance can't keep up with such a drastic change in a single swing. The solution is turn 90 degrees and detect up/down the beach between the lower beach near the water, and the upper beach towards the dry sand. This way the ground balance changes gradually as you walk up/down the slope.

 

[sgoss66]

Wow, Charles...

That's some good stuff right there. Wow. I'll keep in mind about the seaweed, and about a wave hitting the coil. But that thing about "perpendicular to the water's edge," vs. parallel? Wow. That makes total sense, and yet it isn't something I would have thought of. Because, presuming I experienced that falsing, I would have simply concluded "that's just what you have to deal with, when beach hunting in wet sand..." I wouldn't have thought there was any way to mitigate it, that simply a 90-degree change in hunting detecting direction would "fix" things...but it makes total sense why it would. Great stuff there, and I thank you for that. Definitely these tips are going into my "mental notes" for when I'm there. I really don't expect to find anything of any value; it's the "off season," I know nothing about "reading" a beach, etc., so I plan to just kill a little time and enjoy myself -- but these tips you are giving will certainly allow me to up the odds in my favor.

THANKS, Charles!

Steve

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Lets fix that reading a beach issue, its not rocket science. Step out onto the beach and look up and down the shore line for low spots, depressions, and cuts. A low depression will appear like a crescent shape extending up from the waters edge towards the high tide line. The ocean will have washed away the lighter sand and trash, exposing deeper heavier targets. Here's what's happening, in the water just off the beach will be a 2nd sandbar typically under water. Have you heard of a rip tide? That's when the ocean breaks a hole in the outer sand bar, water rushes in/out of this break, that's how you can get sucked out to sea if you swim in a rip tide. The good news is with the break in the outer sand bar waves charge up onto the beach without losing their energy and erode out that area of beach creating those crescent shaped depressions. These breaks in the sand bar sometimes last weeks, and gradually move up/down the shore line so you just keep following it and hunting it. Eventually the break fills in and that's the end of that.

Alternatively sometimes the waves instead dig a deep hole at the waters edge, could be 8-10 feet deep, they dig up long buried heavier targets and throw them up onto the wet sand. If you are detecting along the waters edge at low tide and start digging quarters and fishing sinkers slow down and cover that area well for gold rings. These holes can last for a single tide to a few days, they are gold ring honey holes, you can hunt them clean come back at the next low tide and its full of targets again.

If there are no obvious depressions, look for exposed shells, the shells being heavier typically you will find targets there, shells are also a clue to where the otherwise invisible deep holes above that are tossing targets up onto the beach may be located.

Cuts look like cliffs in the sand, could be a 6 inch cliff, a 2 foot cliff, in extreme cases a side winding nor'easter storm waves hitting the beach at a 45 degree angle I have seen cliffs in NJ beaches 8-10 feet tall.

Conversely avoid areas of the beach that appear mounded up and sand piles, you probably won't see any shells just light sand. At best there may be some very lightweight targets in them trash typically or more often no targets or trash.

Reading waves...slow curling waves, that curl along the shoreline slowly, like a mini version of a Hawaiian surfer type wave pick sand up and throw it up onto the beach burying targets. Waves that come in and crash on the beach all loud and angry peels sand off the beach exposing targets. Typically these waves are during the fall/winter/spring storm season. These waves also sort targets for you by weight, its common to find a line of targets parallel to the water where the heaviest targets are concentrated, say quarters, nickels, fishing sinkers and heavier gold. Further up or down the beach slope you may find a line of lighter targets like zinc cents and dimes. Depending on the storm the heavy stuff could be lower near the waters edge with the light targets further up the slope, or just the opposite of that. So an experienced strategy when first arriving at the beach is to zig zag between the waters edge and high tide line looking for these lines, then once you find them hunt parallel to the water on these lines. With some good erosion this is typically when I have my multiple gold dug days. Also the storm season wave action washes away most of the light aluminum trash getting it out of your way.

There now adjust your attitude and go dig some gold. Expect to find gold and you will, go to the beach with a I probably won't find anything attitude and very often that's just what happens. Arrive at the beach intending to put a proper beating on it, don't take any crap off the beach kick it in the shins toss it to the ground and kick sand it is face!

 

[sgoss66]

Charles,

Wow. What can I say? THANK YOU for taking the time to discuss this. I very much appreciate your time! Once again, everything you say makes perfect. logical sense, but it's clear that it is a gold-mine of experience boiled down into some "bite-sized nuggets" that I otherwise would not have figured out on my own, on such a short trip to the beach. I am definitely printing this out, and taking it with me, so that I can read it before heading out to hunt, as a reminder.

ONE BIG CAVEAT, though. A huge "fly in the ointment" has come up, that I'm not sure how to solve yet. This morning while hunting at a local park, my Explorer decided to go "belly up," giving me an "overload" signal that simply won't go away, not matter what I do (disconnect the coil, power of/on the unit, factory reset, etc.) So, I am almost sure it's going to have to make a trip to the Minelab repair center (awaiting a call back from Minelab with advice, and most likely an RMA number). This means, I will be without my Explorer, unless by some miracle. I am going to look into trying to borrow a unit from a friend (an E-Trac), but not sure if that will work out, or not. I'm trying to figure out a plan "B", since -- wouldn't you know it -- I sold my backup machine (Fisher F19) just a week ago, to aid in funding the future purchase of an Equinox! That leaves me only two options --either borrowing an FBS unit from someone, OR...swinging the so-far-impossible-for-me-to-get-used-to Infinium...

In any case, I'm going to try to solve this "machine dilemma." But in the mean time, if you come up with any other tips that you happen to think of, I'm all ears. Like I say, I'm going to print out everything we've discussed, for reference. Thanks to you, I now feel able to have a much more confident attitude toward beach detecting than would have been the case without our conversation (ASSUMING I find a machine to use!)

THANK YOU!

Steve

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

For the record while I have learned a few things on my own beach hunting, much of what I'm sharing I learned from someone else who spent 30 years hunting beaches and was kind enough to teach me. So just paying it forward. See your PM regarding your broke down Explorer.

Charles,

Wow. What can I say? THANK YOU for taking the time to discuss this. I very much appreciate your time! Once again, everything you say makes perfect. logical sense, but it's clear that it is a gold-mine of experience boiled down into some "bite-sized nuggets" that I otherwise would not have figured out on my own, on such a short trip to the beach. I am definitely printing this out, and taking it with me, so that I can read it before heading out to hunt, as a reminder.

ONE BIG CAVEAT, though. A huge "fly in the ointment" has come up, that I'm not sure how to solve yet. This morning while hunting at a local park, my Explorer decided to go "belly up," giving me an "overload" signal that simply won't go away, not matter what I do (disconnect the coil, power of/on the unit, factory reset, etc.) So, I am almost sure it's going to have to make a trip to the Minelab repair center (awaiting a call back from Minelab with advice, and most likely an RMA number). This means, I will be without my Explorer, unless by some miracle. I am going to look into trying to borrow a unit from a friend (an E-Trac), but not sure if that will work out, or not. I'm trying to figure out a plan "B", since -- wouldn't you know it -- I sold my backup machine (Fisher F19) just a week ago, to aid in funding the future purchase of an Equinox! That leaves me only two options --either borrowing an FBS unit from someone, OR...swinging the so-far-impossible-for-me-to-get-used-to Infinium...

In any case, I'm going to try to solve this "machine dilemma." But in the mean time, if you come up with any other tips that you happen to think of, I'm all ears. Like I say, I'm going to print out everything we've discussed, for reference. Thanks to you, I now feel able to have a much more confident attitude toward beach detecting than would have been the case without our conversation (ASSUMING I find a machine to use!)

THANK YOU!

Steve

 

[sgoss66]

You certainly are "paying it forward," Charles. I very much appreciate it!

Steve

 

[sgoss66]

Good news --

My friend is allowing me to borrow his back-up machine (E-Trac) until my Explorer arrives back from Minelab, so my beach hunting is "back on," as they say!

Thanks for all the good advice; I will make good use of it.

Steve