Beach Hunting Frustration....Help a Newbie Out!

Thank you all for the help. I figured that it would be tough to just roll onto a beach and do fantastic. I was sure that there is a learning curve and you have all confirmed that. Sadly, I live about 6 hours from the closest beach so I will have to settle for just doing short hunts while on vacations and keeping my fingers crossed that I fins something cool.

The hunting method I was using was taken from Metal Detecting NYC's YouTube page. Seems like that dude does a fine job on the beach. Maybe I can find something cool on my next trip out. Just have to remember that if I swing the coil long enough I'm bound to fins something!
 
I spent a week on a SoCal beach last summer and used all Tom's tips and found nothing but aluminum trash and crusty clad. . . and one big old silver ring, up in the dry sand, which I chalked up to luck. Best thing I've found on a New England beach was a Williams-Sonoma bread plate.

Beaches are a LOT harder to detect than folks think.
 
Where to start .......
Firstly, if you don't hunt you won't find anything. With that said, I've learned that there are times/conditions when it truly is A WASTE OF TIME.
For years I lived and worked a very short distance from San Diego beaches. I worked the graveyard shift. When I got off work I would hit the beach and check out the tides and movements. One week it would be sanded in, the next there would rock exposures... On the sanded in events, just go home... unless you have energy to burn. During the cuts and clay, rock exposure/low tide events you got maybe 3 hrs to get stuff done before the tides come in and it's a new issue to worry about.
Only being a west coast beach hunter I can say that May through October is cherry picking. Better luck at late night dry sand and slope hunting. In the winter and early spring especially during storms and crappy weather its all about the low tide lines and erosion spots and getting very wet.
85% of hunters are afraid to get there feet wet. Literally. That leaves ALOT of real estate for the sting ray lovers. I've found well over 150 gold rings and I would say that 75% of them have been in the wet or at least the wet packed low tide sand. Hunt next to piers and areas that the tides will rip tide during non-low tide events. Its not all about hard work, it's about timing and where you choose to hit.... Actually, it's all about luck because as we all know, Gold is where it is.. not where you think it is. HH&GL
 
I spent a week on a SoCal beach last summer and used all Tom's tips and found nothing but aluminum trash and crusty clad. . . and one big old silver ring, up in the dry sand, .....

Then you did not use "Tom's tips". You were not hunting mother nature's eroded spots. Or you do not know how to interpret the right-erosion episodes.

And none of my Tom's-beach-trips address dry sand hunting. Article was strictly about erosion, and I detest dry sand hunting.
 
Then you did not use "Tom's tips". You were not hunting mother nature's eroded spots. Or you do not know how to interpret the right-erosion episodes.



And none of my Tom's-beach-trips address dry sand hunting. Article was strictly about erosion, and I detest dry sand hunting.
Fair enough.

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I spent a week on a SoCal beach last summer and used all Tom's tips and found nothing but aluminum trash and crusty clad. . . and one big old silver ring, up in the dry sand, which I chalked up to luck. Best thing I've found on a New England beach was a Williams-Sonoma bread plate.

Beaches are a LOT harder to detect than folks think.



Why would you listen to Tom? He is a lawyer, they lie all the time... :yes:
 
Don't use a W pattern over low spots. Lay down what we call a "grid" and hammer it. A high spot if you hit something passing through, hammer it as well. Walkway paths from entrance to beaches and hotels going to the water, grid those out as well. Depending where you are a beach tells you something about itself. Right now if you drop a quarter where i am, it is 14" deep or more next day. We have clean sand from replenishment. No shell, clay or rock. So the drops keep sinking. If you stand there with water going over your feet, you sink too!

Agreed. There is a layer of coins and treasure that has sunk many feet below the surface of even the dry part of the beaches but just how deep is that layer?
 
"Just have to remember that if I swing the coil long enough I'm bound to fins something!"
This is true but it is also true that your best chances to find gold are when the conditions are optimal and if you do your homework you will learn what those conditions are. You mentioned "La Jolla Shores" which I don't hunt very much because other beaches are much closer. However, I once did hit it on the right day (with about 10 other hunters) and found a heavy gold chain, a gold signet ring and several silver coins. I know that other gold rings and 100 year old coins were found by others that day as well.
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I also remember that I started that hunt with a PI detector and switched to my Excalibur because of SO MUCH iron trash.
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I still wear that chain today sans the facial hair. If you are really determined to find the gold, you will. It is there. GL & HH!
 
When I first started, I use to get a gold ring every 80 to 100 hours and only hunted weekends. It takes time and patience and learn from every outing. As you dig targets, look where you dug your holes and the type of target retrieved. You will learn "your beach" where things settle. Lite and heavy targets. All beaches are not the same. You need to determine if you are going after new drops or old stuff. Now my numbers are vast improved since then. 20 gold rings a year for the past 5 years.
 
Agreed. There is a layer of coins and treasure that has sunk many feet below the surface of even the dry part of the beaches but just how deep is that layer?

If you hunt the dry sand with every other hunter, you won't find much.
You need to hunt different areas, think of different tactics and research old places. Researching old places it part of what got me into this hobby, that and fossil hunting
 
If you hunt the dry sand with every other hunter, you won't find much.
You need to hunt different areas, think of different tactics and research old places. Researching old places it part of what got me into this hobby, that and fossil hunting

You missed my point. There has got to be a thick belt like layer of coins and metal junk many feet down because of the way metal buries itself on the beach but it is so far down that no metal detector can find it.
Go to fairly hard packed sand.
As gently as humanly possible, place a new penny on the surface of the sand.
The penny will immediately start sinking as in burying itself.
The question is what depth will it sink to before it stops sinking?
 
You missed my point. There has got to be a thick belt like layer of coins and metal junk many feet down because of the way metal buries itself on the beach but it is so far down that no metal detector can find it.
Go to fairly hard packed sand.
As gently as humanly possible, place a new penny on the surface of the sand.
The penny will immediately start sinking as in burying itself.
The question is what depth will it sink to before it stops sinking?


This is right on... after hurricane Sandy it ripped feet off of the dry sand and I killed the gold... one stop I found 17 gold and countless silver off that spot, another spot I found 18 gold but not as much silver... it was a good year for me after Sandy up in the dry not so much in the wet... a nice discriminating pulse would be a good choice for the dry sand after a storm like that... I even pulled a couple coins from the 1700's after Sandy so its there for sure...
 
This is right on... after hurricane Sandy it ripped feet off of the dry sand and I killed the gold... one stop I found 17 gold and countless silver off that spot, another spot I found 18 gold but not as much silver... it was a good year for me after Sandy up in the dry not so much in the wet... a nice discriminating pulse would be a good choice for the dry sand after a storm like that... I even pulled a couple coins from the 1700's after Sandy so its there for sure...


wow ! :shock:
 

I should have posted it was over a series of days not a hunt... 3 for 4 hunts each time...

Some beaches it was all silver no gold... I found it strange... in fact I took Captain Silver to a number of spots and we did really well on the silver but we didn't find gold those spots was it deeper? Possibly... I think we both hunted with GT's maybe he will chime in...

Some of the Barbers and Seateds came out like new...
 
.... and we did really well on the silver but we didn't find gold those spots was it deeper? Possibly... ......

I have seen days where coins are everywhere (inc. silver coins), but : Not a gold ring to be found. Also, no fishing sinkers to be found. Conversely, I've been in other zones where the fishing sinkers (and a gold ring or two in the mix) outnumber coins. Eg.: You might get 15 sinkers, a gold ring or two, and only 3 coins.

And in these cases, it's not a matter of the "gold rings being deeper". It's a matter of mother nature's placement after her riffle board decisions. The gold and sinkers were left somewhere else in the pattern, but not necessarily "deeper" .

An example of this : I recall patterns where the dimes were closest the cut. Then as you moved down the slope, it would be nickels. Then move further, and it would be quarters. Then halves. And then when you reach the water's edge, it's only sinkers and such.

A buddy of mine got into this arrangement one time, and ended up with 7 gold rings in 15 minutes. Interrupted by only an occasional sinker during that 15 minutes. Meanwhile, his buddies were up high, by the cut, giggling like little school girls at all the silver coins they were finding. Imagine their surprise when they saw my friend's gold ring count. Doh !
 
I have seen days where coins are everywhere (inc. silver coins), but : Not a gold ring to be found. Also, no fishing sinkers to be found. Conversely, I've been in other zones where the fishing sinkers (and a gold ring or two in the mix) outnumber coins. Eg.: You might get 15 sinkers, a gold ring or two, and only 3 coins.

And in these cases, it's not a matter of the "gold rings being deeper". It's a matter of mother nature's placement after her riffle board decisions. The gold and sinkers were left somewhere else in the pattern, but not necessarily "deeper" .

An example of this : I recall patterns where the dimes were closest the cut. Then as you moved down the slope, it would be nickels. Then move further, and it would be quarters. Then halves. And then when you reach the water's edge, it's only sinkers and such.

A buddy of mine got into this arrangement one time, and ended up with 7 gold rings in 15 minutes. Interrupted by only an occasional sinker during that 15 minutes. Meanwhile, his buddies were up high, by the cut, giggling like little school girls at all the silver coins they were finding. Imagine their surprise when they saw my friend's gold ring count. Doh !


That is awesome the 7 gold in 15 minutes... I ran into a similar situation I was hunting with a bunch of guys who chose to go water hunting 4 of them... I saw washed out spot at the bottom of the slope I had my GT with me... I pulled 6 gold a couple silver nothing to write home about but the rest of the targets were bottlecaps which I left for the next guy :lol:of course I hunted longer than 15 minutes it was a normal hunt but I was very happy... those 4 guys went out to dinner for skunk stew :yes: those who look the beach over to get a good read will do better than joe blow swinging a Deus 2 if he can't read a beach :laughing:
 
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