Hi Mark,
I have been wading for years, and just a few weeks ago I found something out with my water pouch which made a massive difference. I use a waist bag with 2 zip pockets on it. I have used the bag for a couple of years. (it's lasted because I Vaseline the zip regularly and wash it in fresh water after each outing). Anyway I was working a beach that has lots of trash, it was ring pull central. As i'm sure everyone knows, it takes a lot of time to sort your detector out, unzip your pouch, put the fiddly ring pull in the pouch zip it back up and get your detector ready. I was finding a ring pull nearly every other step, so in an hour you can see I was spending a good 15-20 minutes unzipping and zipping up the pouch. I noticed a hole in the top of the pouch and I made it a bit bigger, then I could fit the ring pulls straight in through the hole. It saved me a lot of time, which I spent detecting not zipping, and I found a gold ring that I may well have not you found. I can fit coins in through the hole, ring pulls and sweet rappers. It is almost impossible for anything to come out of the hole, it's on the top of the pouch. It's like a lobster trap, the items can drop in but can't come out.
If I find gold I always put it far up my wetsuit sleeve, I have never lost any and it means I can happily let anyone look through my pouch. Sometimes lifeguards or cops might hassle you, when you empty both pockets of your pouch out and they see loads of ring pulls and a few coins they say carry on. Little do they know I've got a few gold rings up my sleeve!!
Some People may think it's a petty thing to save time on putting ring pulls away but seriously check out how many I found in a week. Imagine 30 seconds for each 1, that's most of your detecting time gone...,
Good luck buddy