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Last Saturday I decided to get out and enjoy the unusual, for January, weather here in N. Calif. I met my partner Reno Jim and headed for a spot we've hunted for years. We didn't expect to find anything, maybe a crumb that had been overlooked in all the trash. It was just a good day to get some exersize after the holidays. While Jim worked the banks digging trash, I started up a dry creek bed rechecking exposed bedrock I'd already hunted before. I came to a spot where a 10 ft section of new bedrock has been exposed. It looked like a gully washer had come through and blown off the overburden. It was just above a spot I had done well at in years past. I wasn't expecting anything as I had seen fresh dig holes further down stream. Within a foot of hitting the new bedrock I got a good signal which I knew for sure was a bullet. I scraped a bit of dirt off and the signal was gone. Checking the dirt, there it was, right on top, a nice little 1.5 dwter. Wow, that was easy. I wonder how that got missed. I moved another foot up stream, and bang, another signal. Again, I was sure it was trash, it was so big and loud. This one I checked with the pulse delay to see if it went away like a nail, but it was still there, so again, thinking it's a bullet, I scraped off the dirt and got the signal in the cup. It couldn't be a nugget, that first one was a fluke, the only one in all that bedrock. But, sure enough, out rolled an ugly 3 dwter encased in red quartz! At this point I thought I'd better call Jim over to hunt the rest of the spot. He'd been on a long dry spell. He hunted that spot the rest of the day but could only come up with one tiny little .1 dwt grain. I left him to clean it out and moved further upstream. Around the corner was more bedrock that I had hunted at least a dozen times over the years. A couple of nails later came a loud booming nail signal right in a little pocket of rock. And again, scraping the dirt out with the pick, again, I look down and see a huge flat nugget just laying there. I couldn't believe it! How could I have missed it before? Because it was SO big and loud, I just passed it up KNOWING it was trash. Geezz, you think I would know better by now. Glad I wasn't hearing nearly the iron trash of years past because I was using my TDI in low conductivity which knocks out the larger iron. We were both using the TDI SL with the 9x5 Jimmy loop. So, by the end of the day, we each had found one more small piece for a total of just over 1/2 oz. The big unly slug weighs 5.7 dwt. Good start to the new year! Digger Bob