When I teach people about finding gold, I often explain that it is helpful to think of any river or stream that carries gold as being something like a sluice box.

If you have a bad case of gold fever like me, then it’s nice to know that you can get some of that pretty yellow metal almost any time of the year, wet or dry.

This same concept is true of many of our modern-day rivers, and we have to find out where their gold originated if we can.

After washing the top sixty to ninety feet of gravel, the old- timers hit the bedrock. The bedrock paid one-eighth to one-half of an ounce to the square foot…