"Map prospecting"

I haven't been out doing some actual prospecting since last time but I have been reading lot's and lot's of info on the Interenet plus one book I have plusb studying some video's.

I have also been pondering a lot of maps over this area looking for suitable streams. After finding a promising stream on a map I have compared that with both known gold findings and also areal photo's. I have three streams I am going to have a closer look at "in real life" the next time I'm out prospecting again :-)

A few images from my "training" at home

Here are a few images from my panning training at home, I have gotten ten small gold flakes and a four a bit less small to practise on. This is actually a good idea, you get the hang of it a bit faster I think.


These are the "small flakes" I have to practise with.



These are the four "less small flakes" I have to practise with.



And here we have a few of the smaller flakes in the micro sliuce I have bought. This I haven't gotten the hang of yet, some times half of the flakes pass through the sluice. Maybe it is more suited for really small flour gold particles. Time will tell...

No luck....

Well, there doesn't seem to be any gold in that small sample I was able to bring home yesterday... I will "practise" a bit later on this evening with some small grains of real gold I have purchased, that is actually quite a good idea - buy some real gold dust/flakes and mix that up in some sand and start panning it or running it through your sluice.

First Go...

OK, I have made my first try at looking for gold. I went out to a small stream about 30 minutes from home and found a patch behing a large rock that looked promising. But there were hardly any sand/gravel on the bottom - mostly larger rocks...

But I used my Henderson Pump for about 30 minutes and managed to get some smaller sand/particles out - I did not pan them right away but brought them home to "analyze" them later on, maybe tomorrow. I did manage to catch a living crayfish(!) using the pump though :-)