It rained over four inches that night and the creek flooded both my backyard and my workshop. When I opened the door to my workshop Christmas morning, an unwelcome sight greeted me.

We chatted for a bit and then we had to take off, but I kept what he said in the back of my mind as we rushed out to some other gold-bearing place in the Mother Lode to feed our gold fever.

When he got home that night, he looked at the plotted points of gold and trash he had dug and saw that there was a distinct line where the gold nuggets were being found.

With the recent surge of interest in gold projects, it’s about time to revisit a subject that strikes fear into the hearts of small-scale miners: Permits.

Placers that are directly associated with lode deposits are sometimes overlooked and may have good potential for those who are willing to search for them.