LuckyLundy Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 I thought I'd head out this morning, even though it was 30 degree's and windy. I put on my 16" Round Coiltek to hit some open spots that I pulled some shallow ones off a few weeks back. The soil was moist from the recent rains and I was digging some deep targets. The weather finally got the best of me after 3 hours and I headed home with 4 more to add to the poke.LuckyLundy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 LuckyLundy,Nice looking gold nuggets! Damn near a quarter ounce. It is tough hunting in those conditions. I braved it last weekend for a couple hours between rain showers and it was miserable. Looks like you have detecting figured out. Once I got detecting figured out, I hardly run the dredges any more. Hope you pop some more. Take care.Cheers,matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyLundy Posted December 19, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 Matt,I love to dredge, it's very peaceful underwater and I love seeing a string of nuggets & pickers in them crevices. This dredge season started good, then slowed down and started to break our dredging spirits. We packed up the 5" and moved it on the otherside of a horseshoe bend...of course we took the shortcut, up over the hill. My 3 dredging partners and I finally started to find some decent color before the days got short and the water got to cold. We look forward to next season.LuckyLundy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blues_dad Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 Matt,I love to dredge, it's very peaceful underwater and I love seeing a string of nuggets & pickers in them crevices. This dredge season started good, then slowed down and started to break our dredging spirits. We packed up the 5" and moved it on the otherside of a horseshoe bend...of course we took the shortcut, up over the hill. My 3 dredging partners and I finally started to find some decent color before the days got short and the water got to cold. We look forward to next season.LuckyLundyThat's a nice little spot there lundy, a lot clearer than where we were stuck on the Klamath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyLundy Posted December 19, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 BluesdadThis creek is so far out in the woods you have to fight bears and bigfoots from eating your lunch when your not looking. A big river like the Klamath has a lot of gold, so there is always someone upstream from you silting you out. I use to dredge on some big rivers here in California and sometimes I had to dredge like I was a racoon feeling around for them nozzle cloggers. I like that clear water and them big trout!LuckyLundy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blues_dad Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 bout the only wildlife i saw my time out there was a coupe eagles, couple osprey, and of course they were in each other's territory, so got to the osprey chase the eagle out every day, a baby bear cub, never saw the momma, lots of deer, crawfish I picked up right off the river bottom for dinner at night sometimes,and a beaver who got a bit curious about our operation one day and stuck around a while. im a city boy, so i must say I was quite thrilled with all the wildlife. we didn't get clouded out really by other dredgers, closest was about 1/2 mile upstream from us Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 LuckyLundy,Nice looking Proline dredge. Almost exact same as mine, but mine is a 6". I hear you about the bears. My property has apple trees all around and toward the end of the season when the apples are ripe, the bears are abundant. One night we drant quite a few beers and when I got up in the morning I saw a bag of Oreo's in the bushes and couldn't figure out why my buddies threw them in there. Then is realized that a bear had been there all night and ate all of our food. He shelled an entire bag of peanuts and crapped all over the place. My buddy got up twice that night to relieve his bladder and had no idea that the bear was there all night. He now carries a gun when he goes out during the night. The damn bears are damaging the siding on my camping cabin that I just finished building. I love the clear mountain water in the Sierra. It sure is cold though. Take care.Cheers,matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nuggetslayer Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 Ya it was cold! I went out there to see how he was doing and I only hung out for about 15 min. It was to cold for me glad ya got two more after I left nice gold there Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 LuckyLundy,Here is a picture from 2 years ago with the "twins". Even in the middle of the Summer, the water is damn cold. I added a triplet last year, but she is not in any pictures right now. Take care.Cheers,matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hawkeye Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 Matt Nice looking operation. Even with snow on the ground here right now that creek looks soooo nice. Do you have any boulders big enough to need winching? If you do what do you use? I am thinking of getting a griphoist for next year but they are really expensive but I hear they do a good job.Wes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 Wes,Yep, there are some big boulders. The wetsuit in the pic is laying a a big one. It is hard to see from the pic, but it is big. The bigger ones are in the gut of the creek and we move them only enough to clean the bedrock below them. We use a chain puller to move them. I've been thinking about a hydraulic winch and almost bought a used one last year, but it sold before I got in touch with the seller. I have a friend that has one and he is welcome to dredge with us anytime. Right now I detect more than I dredge because it is hard to spend extended time away from the kids. There is a boulder that is bigger than my cabin next to the creek. Kind of like the boulders in LuckyLundy's picture. I would believe that the oldtimers got under it or it would have been blasted. Take care.Cheers,matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyLundy Posted December 19, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 Matt,Yep, we move some whopper boulders. We use two heavy duty 8000lb winches on some of them big suckers. We have to move them out of the holes...we like or arms attached to our bodies. Even though I do long arm dredge every now and then. 6" dredge, I'm afraid if I got one then I'd want and 8"...it has to stop somewhere...doesn't it?LuckyLundy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyLundy Posted December 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2008 Matt,I see you have a smaller dredge closebye. We do the samething! We keep the 5" moving material and use a 4" to fine cleaning. Here's what one partner found in a little crack behind the 5" cleaning up with the 4". I was dredging with the 5" sucked up some nice gold on top of the bedrock and keep following the paystreak. I marked the little crevice that I could see pickers in with a quartz cobble. A couple hours later, I got out to eat lunch and my partner kept dredging in that area I thought I left the quartz cobble. He busted up the little crack and it was full of pickers! We had to take a photo of the picker pocket, cause we pick it clean!LuckyLundy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grubstake Posted December 20, 2008 Report Share Posted December 20, 2008 You and Nuggetslayer have done well, too bad those guys on the other forum, have to bad mouth everyone if stuff don't go there way. I see they were bad mouthing Flakmagnet, he's my friend. They don't even know him. But yet they got something bad to say about everyone including me. Too much neg. posts for me. Bad Karma! Grubstake Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyLundy Posted December 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2008 Much more peaceful here on Rob's site! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin nuggethunting Posted December 20, 2008 Admin Report Share Posted December 20, 2008 Hello Guys, Always great to see those pictures of dredging and gold! I love to dredge and can't wait for enough water to run across our claims here in Arizona. Hope you guys continue to post more dredging pictures. Thanks for always sharing. Rob Allison Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlakMagnet Posted December 20, 2008 Report Share Posted December 20, 2008 Grubstake,Here's what LuckyLindy said:"NuggetSlayer and myself don't mind posting our gold pic's. What we do mind is people hunting us down in the field."I had read his post on HDF where he told that forum the same thing and who he thought it was.I liked that he was straight enough to come out and post about it.This is one of a number of like-situations regarding this forum that have come up in it's short history. Instead of looking into whether there was any validity in what he said,HDF went on the attack.But that kind of situation left unexamined and unanswered magnifies the difficulty of trusting the acquaintances we make online or anywhere else and stifles the possibilities of people wanting to share their experiences - one ofthe most important parts of this hobby - and life for that matter.Flak Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grubstake Posted December 20, 2008 Report Share Posted December 20, 2008 Yeh, david, I have been attacked on that forum too! And I have never made a post on it! Or ever will! Grubstake Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt Posted December 22, 2008 Report Share Posted December 22, 2008 LuckyLundy,Nice looking gold! Those little cracks can really pay off. The larger dredge is a Proline 6" and the smaller one is a 2.5". I also picked up a used 4" Proline last Spring beacuse I sold my first dredge (4" Proline) when I bought the 6". Selling the 4" was part of the agreement with my wife when I bought the six. A person really needs a dredge for all river conditions! The 6" dredge is an entire different experience. Believe it or not it is a lot more work than a 5" dredge. The river that is in the picture has a lot of large cobbles. Most of them won't even go up a 6" nozzle, so from a prodution standpoint, there is not much difference between using a 6 or a 4 because you are throwing so much cobble by hand. It certainly is fun to see the gold sitting in the cracks on the bottom of the river bed. I am still hoping to hit one of the cracks the 49's missed. Merry Christmas and take care.Cheers,matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyLundy Posted December 22, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2008 Matt,I was lucky enough to find a spot the oldtimers missed back in 1992. It's in Grubstak's neck of the woods. A buddy of mine had been bugging me to take him prospecting for months. None of my dredge partners could make it that weekend, so me and the greenhorn it the creek. It had been raining all week and my last dredge hole was way under muddy water. The creek was 4 times it's normal size and I said, well let's pan some gold and as we walk the creek I was looking for a spot in the new shoreline. I saw this bedrock head poking out of the ground and I can tell that the water a couple days earlier was pushing up some new material behind it. I said, let set up the little 3" here. 15 minutes later, I had the nozzle at work and then it started to rain pretty hard. I dredge for about 30 minutes before the water started to rise and having been in a couple of flash floods in Arizona, I knew it was time to shut her down and move from harms way. I was following the bedrock head down the backside and it was some great looking red clay. I pulled a couple of pickers out before the nozzle got them. Anyways, I checked the header box and it was loaded with gold and the creek didn't care it was lapping at our feet that was dry 2 minutes before. We got the equipment out and ourselves back home with 10 dwt's. I called my partners up to tell them I hit a pocket and that I only dredge for about 30 minutes. Well to make a long story short it took 7 weekends to pull out all the gold out of the cemented tertiary that layed below the red clay layer! Now if any old miners reads this under that tertiary layer was white clay. This clay was tougher than the tertiary...we left it and never hit bedrock. Yes all of us have lost sleep, should have blasted it out to see that bedrock! I still know where it's at!!!LuckyLundy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordKhufu Posted December 23, 2008 Report Share Posted December 23, 2008 Lundy is refering to what we called the mother hole. Lets just say we pulled out much more than a pound of gold. I still kick myself for not taking it down to bedrock Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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