I love it when I am in the middle of a high trash area and all the ferrous bars go away, the screen number goes to a three or an eight, and the meter is forty to a hundred. I don’t know for sure that I have found gold, but it narrows the odds down.

I didn’t follow-up on this opportunity at that time, as I already had as much on my plate as I could handle, but the potential for this property has never left my mind.

Working underwater certainly has its challenges, but since I wanted to learn how to blast underwater, I just  needed to dive in headfirst and take charge of the operation.

Back at the entry point of the mine, we took turns slowly crawling down the slope leading into the mine portal with our metal detectors, hard hats and flashlights. The mine was hand dug and is about 75 yards long.

The biggest nugget I have found detecting here was three grams and the following weekend someone found a 9-gram nugget while detecting. Some have even found quarter-ounce nuggets, with one being a chevron nugget.