BarnacleBill
New member
I decided to make Sunday opening day for getting in the water. As my local lakes are still all frozen over, through the wonder of web cams, I saw that a very famous public freshwater beach some distance from me had open water from the shoreline to about 200ft out. The skies were heavily overcast with a temp. of 42Fdeg and a stiff breeze at my house, so I expected that it might be a little chilly. I had briefly stopped at this beach once with the 5x10 and found a little clad and lots of foil, but that was about it.
Arriving & parking my vehicle I noticed the barriers and "Closed" signs all around the entrance, but figured the worst that could happen was to get kicked out by the local Gendarmes, if they even cared to come get me out in the water, not likely................'cause there was a constant 30mph wind blowing in from across about 15 miles of open ice. It was just plain nasty, enough so that normally there would be 2>3ft swells striking the beach. But since most of it's frozen, the waves can't build much with a couple hundred feet of open water.
I was just starting to get my waders out of my front seat when a pick'em up truck pulled up next to me and three Good 'ol boys got out in heavy weather camo gear. They started fetchin' fishing tools out of the bed of the truck and headed through the barriers towards a breakwater that runs next to the beach. When they walked by and saw me with the waders they did several double takes and I can only imagine they thought I was a real hardcore fisherman.
So I sat down on the bumper of my vehicle and started to thread the waders on when an SUV arrived and three young fellers got out. About a minute later they walked over to me and one said "Excuse me Sir are you going fishing"?. I was kind of taken aback for a second because it's not often to hear politeness from the youth of today. Now I replied "no I'm not going fishing", and then they were slightly taken aback and glanced at one another 'cause here's this old goat putting waders on. So then the same young feller asked if I knew how to get down to the water. I said "yes, I just saw some fishermen squeeze through the fence over yonder" to get over to the breakwater. They thanked me and headed off to get their poles and go through the fence. But I did notice they were just wearing pull-over sweatshirts........hmmmm.
I decided the weapon of the day would be the X70 with 10.5 DD HF to go after the deeper gold, as I knew this beach had to be hit very hard as it is near a city. So geared up I headed for the water, and found that because of the ice and wave action a few feet out there was about a one foot shelf that dropped down. The sand that made up the top of the shelf was very soft and loose, while the sand at the bottom and extending out into the lake was extremely hard. Some of the hardest packed sand I've ever seen. I had a D-handle spade shovel, and would have to stand on it and wiggle the blade back and forth vigorously just to get it down in. I was thankful that I hadn't brought my scoop because it would have been very frustrating. As it was I was nearly breaking the shovel handle pulling back with all my weight to pivot the blade up.
In looking at the sand I also noticed the riffles were all covered in either Black Sand, Red Sand, or a combination of both. So I found an area clear of targets and took a reading with the X70 mineralization function. She showed 120,000, "ouch!", "maybe I was over some deep iron", so I moved several times and took more readings, nope 120,000 she be for sure. The amount of junk was unbelievable; first because of the shelf there were broken up bits of foil of all shapes & sizes being pushed around by wave action, second there were steel bottle caps everywhere(I didn't dig any because they were easy to recognize), and lastly there were huge pieces of buried iron all over the place.
After about fifteen minutes I noticed the Good 'ol boys had had enough of the wind and they headed out. Five minutes later I noticed one of the young bucks headed back to the SUV to retrieve some heavy coats for the posse. They lasted about another ten minutes after that and were run off by the wind. I soldiered on because of the principle of it, this is part of what metal detecting is all about, it's opening day because I decided it's opening day and I ain't throwin' in the towel!
So I slogged on for another two hours till a rogue wave hit the back of the X70 and I of course said "Oh Sugar!" I unscrewed the connector and she thankfully was water free, but seeing I was gonna have to quit in about 20 minutes to leave anyway, I called it a day. Total take for the day was two zincs and a copper clad rifle round. Was I cold? Yes! Was I discouraged? No! Every day out isn't going to be a great day, and yes it would nice to find great things and post some pictures to share. But these kind of days are as much a part of the hobby as any other, and make you appreciate the good ones more when they come along.
So why did I write this post? To pad my forum post count? Hardly! This was written mostly aimed at those just starting out who may get the impression from pictures posted here that every day is going to be a wonderful day. Wrong! It's like the stock market, there are up days & there are down days, but study the locations you look to invest detecting time in through research, and you will improve your chances through the law of averages. Even when you don't find anything try to learn something. I'm going back to this location to try the 3KHz coil at some point, because I know it will ignore the floating foil very well and should do a fair job against the mineralization. Now a 3KHz DD, Oh Lordy!
HH
BarnacleBill
Arriving & parking my vehicle I noticed the barriers and "Closed" signs all around the entrance, but figured the worst that could happen was to get kicked out by the local Gendarmes, if they even cared to come get me out in the water, not likely................'cause there was a constant 30mph wind blowing in from across about 15 miles of open ice. It was just plain nasty, enough so that normally there would be 2>3ft swells striking the beach. But since most of it's frozen, the waves can't build much with a couple hundred feet of open water.
I was just starting to get my waders out of my front seat when a pick'em up truck pulled up next to me and three Good 'ol boys got out in heavy weather camo gear. They started fetchin' fishing tools out of the bed of the truck and headed through the barriers towards a breakwater that runs next to the beach. When they walked by and saw me with the waders they did several double takes and I can only imagine they thought I was a real hardcore fisherman.
So I sat down on the bumper of my vehicle and started to thread the waders on when an SUV arrived and three young fellers got out. About a minute later they walked over to me and one said "Excuse me Sir are you going fishing"?. I was kind of taken aback for a second because it's not often to hear politeness from the youth of today. Now I replied "no I'm not going fishing", and then they were slightly taken aback and glanced at one another 'cause here's this old goat putting waders on. So then the same young feller asked if I knew how to get down to the water. I said "yes, I just saw some fishermen squeeze through the fence over yonder" to get over to the breakwater. They thanked me and headed off to get their poles and go through the fence. But I did notice they were just wearing pull-over sweatshirts........hmmmm.
I decided the weapon of the day would be the X70 with 10.5 DD HF to go after the deeper gold, as I knew this beach had to be hit very hard as it is near a city. So geared up I headed for the water, and found that because of the ice and wave action a few feet out there was about a one foot shelf that dropped down. The sand that made up the top of the shelf was very soft and loose, while the sand at the bottom and extending out into the lake was extremely hard. Some of the hardest packed sand I've ever seen. I had a D-handle spade shovel, and would have to stand on it and wiggle the blade back and forth vigorously just to get it down in. I was thankful that I hadn't brought my scoop because it would have been very frustrating. As it was I was nearly breaking the shovel handle pulling back with all my weight to pivot the blade up.
In looking at the sand I also noticed the riffles were all covered in either Black Sand, Red Sand, or a combination of both. So I found an area clear of targets and took a reading with the X70 mineralization function. She showed 120,000, "ouch!", "maybe I was over some deep iron", so I moved several times and took more readings, nope 120,000 she be for sure. The amount of junk was unbelievable; first because of the shelf there were broken up bits of foil of all shapes & sizes being pushed around by wave action, second there were steel bottle caps everywhere(I didn't dig any because they were easy to recognize), and lastly there were huge pieces of buried iron all over the place.
After about fifteen minutes I noticed the Good 'ol boys had had enough of the wind and they headed out. Five minutes later I noticed one of the young bucks headed back to the SUV to retrieve some heavy coats for the posse. They lasted about another ten minutes after that and were run off by the wind. I soldiered on because of the principle of it, this is part of what metal detecting is all about, it's opening day because I decided it's opening day and I ain't throwin' in the towel!
So I slogged on for another two hours till a rogue wave hit the back of the X70 and I of course said "Oh Sugar!" I unscrewed the connector and she thankfully was water free, but seeing I was gonna have to quit in about 20 minutes to leave anyway, I called it a day. Total take for the day was two zincs and a copper clad rifle round. Was I cold? Yes! Was I discouraged? No! Every day out isn't going to be a great day, and yes it would nice to find great things and post some pictures to share. But these kind of days are as much a part of the hobby as any other, and make you appreciate the good ones more when they come along.
So why did I write this post? To pad my forum post count? Hardly! This was written mostly aimed at those just starting out who may get the impression from pictures posted here that every day is going to be a wonderful day. Wrong! It's like the stock market, there are up days & there are down days, but study the locations you look to invest detecting time in through research, and you will improve your chances through the law of averages. Even when you don't find anything try to learn something. I'm going back to this location to try the 3KHz coil at some point, because I know it will ignore the floating foil very well and should do a fair job against the mineralization. Now a 3KHz DD, Oh Lordy!
HH
BarnacleBill
HH Randy