New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Probably I've got it all.....

Well I did get a 7 grammer up there the other week! plus I put the hoover over a small area and got 3.6 grams in mostly fines.
Havnt been up around butchers flat since jan. Was at deep creek last 2 trips. Gotta really think outside the square up the Waka if you are detecting. well and sometimes just gotta be lucky. Wher did u guys try? either spot I mentioned?

When I say deep creek I meant the junction with waka. Where you went I got 10 or a bit more grams from the road side of the river. All small tho, with detector.
What detector you running.

I guess that there are a lot of reasons why and why not gold is or is not 'deposited' after a flood.

Firstly on many occasions what you think is gold that is flood deposited is more likely to be gold that has been exposed by the boulders, rocks, stones, gravel and sand being scoured from that section of river thus exposing fresh bedrock with the gold on it or in cracks and crevices exactly where it has been for hundreds and maybe thousands of years - it has not been carried there by floods but merely exposed by floods.

Then you get a flood which scours the banks of the river and exposes new territory with, once again the gold lying exactly where it was for hundreds and maybe thousands of years.

You can get a major slip which washes hillsides down into the river and the river in turn acts as a sluice box to carry the slip material away leaving the gold behind.'
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I have on a couple of occasions after major floods, the big 1981 flood being 'the' one I remember well got genuine 'flood gold' - the extreme current actually 'blasted' the bottom of a couple of deep holes and carried the gold out and this gold was deposited on the downstream side of the hole. I have had two major strikes consisting of several ounces in each case due to this occurring - the interesting irony is that there was no gold worth mentioning left in the hole itself - I think one of the holes where we expected to make our fortunes yielded 5 ounces only and yet I got far more than that immediately below it after the flood.

Both of these spots are still awaiting me with my Goldbug - roll on summer as I am going back this year not because of new gold coming out of the holes - there will be NONE but rather to try the new era method of metal detecting the stream beds below the holes with the minelab and Goldbug.

Edited by user Thursday, 26 July 2012 8:31:53 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

That depends as well on the on the sort of turbulence and on the bedrock or bottom along which the gold has to travel I suppose. I have never seen larger pieces go far - one of the holes I spoke of in the above contribution had some pieces of 1 dwt or 1.5 grammes maximum a few yards or metres downstream from the hole. This hole was deep at both ends so the gold seemed to have had to got 'boilled' up out of hthe hole almost vertically.

The other hole had ounces of gold but it was all fine and floury and spread from the bottom end of the hole downstream maybe twenty foot or 6 to 7 metres only so even a huge flood didnt take it far - that particular hole sloped down from about 30cms down toward the upstream ended where it may have been 2 or 3 metres deep.

Water currents and their tendencies are fickle and do strange things.

In a totally new stream bed I have seen the soil overburden stripped down to the bedrock, six to maybe twenty foot in places and the gold was just lying on the bedrock despite huge amounts of water tearing through narrow channels...only the finest gold actually travelled anywhere.

Edited by user Thursday, 26 July 2012 10:15:00 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

The very first nice lot of gold I ever found was in the Arrow River - it was all fine gold. The crevice was a large one. The total amount of gold was 1/4 ounce or about 7.5 - 8 grammes.

Now that would have been Gold that had accumulated in one of the worlds richest rivers for its size since either the depression days or the Gold rush era of the 1860s. In fifty years very very little had accumulated.

I went back to the very swame crevice ten years later expecting what many people here seem to expect - to find another lot just as big - I got one tiny flake - in ten years that was all that there was...and it might have been one I missed the first time around.

It totally amuses me that it has taken millions of years for the Gold which was found to accumulate in the places where the first Gold rush era miners found it and some people seem to think that give a few years and it will again be replenished.

A bit like General Sir Charles Munros comment when he toured the Gallipoli Battlefield with a very to withdrawing - "This is just like Alice in Wonderland, curiouser and curiouser"

Yes sometimes you will get gold in the river and it will appear to be redeposited but my explanation above is based on more that just a few yesterdays observation and mining.

The biggest nugget I ever got was in a crevice which had been worked and reworked and everyone commented "You would not think that nugget could have travelled here since the crevice was last worked" - The truth is that it wasnt - Floods had scoured the bank away at the end of the crevice to extend it beyond where it had been last worked thus exposing the nugget for the first time so it had been there a the time.

Very usefull information Lammerlaw, and will help me to read the rivers better. It always amazes me that the fine gold that I trap in my river sluice stays there and is not washed out even though there is a really good flow of water. In other words , gold once trapped stays trapped and works the same in the river bed, I can see the logic in that. And I guess that if you don't find gold in an area that previously you did, floods may have buried it deeper?

I found some fine gold too today prospecting,but now i want a digger......

Edited by user Sunday, 10 February 2013 8:03:46 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified