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GEORGIA
GOLD RUSH!!
Some call it sniping, nugget shooting, bedrock bust'n, in Georgia where the gold is pure and course and the nuggets something to behold. After driving 205 miles south to Cleveland, GA "Bedrock bust'n Greg" and I met up at the campgrounds. He was already out scouting exposed bedrock spots on the creek to work that long cool weekend. For me, just a day trip till next Friday, but another 400 miles of driving to that fine Georgia Gold! Scouting the creek right under the Highway Bridge was a hidden natural sluice of vertical exposed and decomposing mossy bedrock. Greg fired up his Gold Bug 2, me my new GP, and we found the trashiest crevices on the inside bend of the river. After several test pans, and sluicing a five-gallon bucket of crevice dirt, we decided that 20 colors were enough to give it a shot. I like to think of crevicing like playing the slots at Buffalo Bills Casino. If you find anything worth keeping, it will probably be a nugget. Greg got to work breaking open the cracks and crevices and washing them down. I floated his 2.5 Keene dredge down creek and we fired it up after some repairs. Meanwhile I was about 20 yards down stream where the bedrock made a vertical drop-off all the way across the swift river. Setting the GP on shallow, sensitive and E for the mono-coil setting, I was sweeping and getting signals like crazy. I was using all metal mode and digging all the trash. I got a good strong signal right on the edge under a large cracked piece of bedrock. I dug and dug until I was disgusted, but the signal kept getting a little more distinct each time. After pulling out 7 nails I thought the signal was gone, but one more sweep of the hole screeched out the signal. The hole was getting around a foot deep and water was seeping in so I decided the only way to get it was to fire up the dredge and suction out the hole. After thoroughly working the bedrock down about 2 feet and 18 inches deep, I shut down the dredge and started digging in the riffles. I picked out two more nails; three lead bullets and I pulled the 9.8 Dwt nugget in the photos from the dredge sluice as shown in photos. Pan shows results of last Sunday's 4/21/02 two hours of dredging: Coarse gold, quicksilver, garnet and rubies.
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