Metal Detecting 101 - Coil Size

With a "smaller" coil , smaller area to have under the coil to transmit info to the control head, ie... better suited to pick out targets in trashy or iron infested areas or tight areas where swinging a larger coil would be hendered

I used an 8" coil on my F2 for about 18 months and found a ton.
I misplaced my sniper coil so I never worried about it but found it and put it on the F2 just as a lark...I was shocked at what happened after.
At sites I had hunted before and thought I did a good job of cleaning this thing found more than I thought was possible time and time again.
I tended to hunt mostly trash filled areas so I finally realized masking was a bigger problem than I ever thought and I rarely took the thing off after that.
Especially when gold and silver started to fly out of the ground.
I used it a lot in wide open less trashy areas too where bigger coils made more sense because of the coverage and still found great treasure.
Bigger coils cover more areas but sometimes it is not about scanning all areas but more about scanning the right areas.
I became a huge fan after that and got snipers for all my detectors and still use them more than all my bigger coils.

I got into it once with a member who insisted that snipers make no sense because all targets they pick up the bigger coils pick up too.
I tried to explain it is not so much the signal you get as much as what kind of signal you get when using different coils.
Multiple targets under coils can change and confuse signals, one target under a coil is isolated and a better, truer signal.

For wide open areas where you want to cover more ground efficiently and deeper use bigger coils.
For areas with tons of trash or iron small coils work better and make it easier to notice good targets.

Post #366 in this long thread us where I first talked about using one of these things and showed what I found on my first few hunts, if you want to see nice pictures of great treasure it continues on for about 800 more posts with pics of the rest of my great finds and many others using this little but mighty $15 hockey puck coil.
http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?p=1300299#post1300299

One of the best discoveries I have ever made in this hobby for me is how much of a difference these smaller coils can make.

Thank you both for the information, it has finally become clear! Some of the parks that I've been trying have been very trashfilled -- a small coil will be on my shopping list to give it a try!