How to dig holes in the sand under water?

dig deeper and expand the hole

Its probably deeper or on the side of the hole, might be a beer can or large piece of junk but ya never know?

Spookydad said:

Since I got my coil bracket installed on my Surf PI today, I went back into the water. I would get a hit and start to dig a hole. The tone would get stronger but it seems to move around. I would take out 5 or 6 scoops and find nothing. I have noticed that when I move my coil straight down in the water, I get a strong tone. When I get to the bottom and settle the coil, the tone goes away. This is normal right?

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Yes, the SAT (Self Adjusting Threshold) of the unit is adjusting to the bottom. You'll get a strong tone when you set the coil on the bottom, then it will settle out.

Spookydad said:

When I check the hole, it is about the size of the coil and the only option is to drop the coil straight down into the hole. The tone sounds solid and louder than the original sounding. Is this a false signal? If I search the side of a wide hole, moving up and down the side causes a tone. What am I doing wrong?
Am I just not digging down far enough? I am usually down 16+ inches at this point.

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This is the SAT at work again. If you sit over a target, the tone will settle out, similar to when you set the coil on the bottom. You must sweep the coil to pinpoint the target.

One point that I learned the hard was is not to dig too deep on the first scoop. I watched what I was doing in shallower water where I could see what was happening, pretending like I was out deep. What I found was that I was digging the first scoop way to deep, so all of the surface sand was going around the scoop and back into the hole as I lifted the scoop, leaving the target there in the bottom of the hole.

Spookydad said:

I did find a couple of pulltabs in the water but mostly came up empty. The wet sand just at the water's edge was much more productive.

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Easier to see what the heck you are doing.

Spookydad said:

I still have a couple more days at the beach so I am hoping to get more tips to make me productive. This forum has been a lifesaver.

SpookyDad

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I'm kind of a novice at surf hunting too, but hopefully my advice will help. Try practicing your pinpointing and digging in knee deep water first, where you can see a little better what you are doing. Try practicing placing you scoop where you pinpointed the target, using your foot as a guide. Then scoop just enough to get a good dig without loosing any of the top layer of sand.

Good luck. It's kinda tough to learn to hunt the mine, but you'll definitely be rewarded!

Thinking about it now, that makes perfect sense. I will try not to dig too deep. I have been trying to dig as deep a first scoop as I could, hoping to get under whatever was there.

I wasn't getting many reliable hits in the shallow water today, so I will give it a bigger effort tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice.

SpookyDad

Spooky


There is a very good book written by Clive J Clynick on waterhunting and is full of tips...

http://www.informulation.on.ca/A557...5C66A423DBD72632862570F400171DD8!OpenDocument

TonyCt on the board carries it as well as others and you won't go wrong picking up a copy... I bought 4 copies and gave them to my hunting partners and they have been waterhunting a lot longer than I have and really enjoy the book and its tips.

Digging in the water takes a little getting used to but it will become second nature for you after a while.

When I first get a signal I place my scoop a couple inches to the rear and to the left and start digging and most of the time I have the target in the scoop after 1 or 2 scoops unless its a slight whisper signal and then I know I'll be digging deep sometimes a signal moving around is a stud earring, bullet or a small coin and can be a PITA to get to stay put in the scoop.

The book will have to wait until I get back home. Thanks for the tip.

I tried to work in the shallow water again today. I took the advice and dug shallow scoops. The target didn't move and I worked down slowly. Unfortunately it was a sparkler down at least 18".

The rest of the shallow water was pretty clean, yielding only one pulltab.

The dry sand did yield a couple dozen more pulltabs for my collection.How many pulltabs are in a ton? Aside from the other bottlecaps and tentpins, I did get 13 cents closer to paying off the detector.

SpookyDad

I love your enthusiasm!