1/8/15 Report - Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Conditions Upgrade. Cut Scallops All Along Treasure Coast Beaches. Signal Finds.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

I have a lot to report today but will hold much of it for some later time.  Today I'll get to the most important and timely information.

I took a look at a number of beaches this morning just after high tide.  All of the beaches that I looked at looked very similar.  There were similar scallops and cuts from South Hutchinson Island to Wabasso.

Douglass Beach This Morning After High Tide.

Seagrape Trail Looking South.

Seagrape Trail Looking North.

 Notice the detectorist between the two sets of stairs.

Wabasso Beach Looking Towards Disney

It isn't very often that the beaches look so similar from Fort Pierce to Wabasso.

The sand in front of the cuts was mushy.  Cuts were about three foot high at the highest.

The water didn't get very far back on the beach.  That was disappointing.

The waves were highest at the Fort Pierce buoy around 5 AM this morning, decreased after that, and then have been increasing again.

This NOAA web site shows the data coming from the Fort Pierce and Sebastian buoys.  Take a look.  You can get a lot of information from this web site.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41114


My increase in beach detecting conditions rating is only up from a 1 to a 2.  I only expect a very very few scattered cobs to be found.

The Turtle Trail access was closed.

North of Seagrape Trail there was a lot of very small iron pieces just below the cuts.   Pulse machines will be detecting barely visible pieces of iron.

I've talked about "signal" finds before.  I found some of those today too.  See photo below.

Lead Bullet "Signal" Finds

These small caliber lead bullets appear to have been shot into sand.  Sorry - not the best photo.

I've found many of these at Turtle Trail when the back dunes were eroding and found them in areas and at times when cobs were found on the beach.  I take them as one indicator that detecting conditions are improving.

I know for sure that many of these come from the dunes.  I've tracked them.

The surfing web site is predicting a higher surf through tonight and then decreasing slightly through tomorrow.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/14/12 Report - More on Working Cuts and Reading Finds - A Recent Example

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Cut Found Yesterday

Here is a nice cut.   It is about three or four feet high, but I wouldn't pass it up if it was only a six inches high.   It is well placed.

This is the type of cut that I would never pass up without checking.   You can see the vegetation on top of the dune.  That means the sand hasn't been eroded back that far for at least as long as it took that vegetation to grow.

There will almost always be coins in front of a cut like this.  And very often those coins will be older.   A few new drops might get mixed in, but coins in a place like this will be encrusted.  Some of my best silver US coin spots have looked just like this.

Even if someone beats you to a spot like this, they usually won't get all of the coins.  So if you see a spot like this, and you can see someone has already detected there, go ahead and detect it anyhow to see what they might have missed.

When a place like this cuts, there will usually be spots where the vegetation protects part of the cut.  Most detectorists, for some reason, don't detect well around vegetation.   Stick your coil back under any limbs.    Detect those spots that others almost always miss.   Vines and limbs will catch and hold coins and other things.  They will also create eddy currents where coins and things will settle.

A small coil will help you get back in between limbs.  Also a detector with a slow sweep speed will work well in situations like this.   You can't whip your coil in close around limbs and obstructions.

Very often the coins in front of a cut like this will be very near the surface.  Occasionally there will be deeper coins, but most often they won't be deep even though they show evidence of having been lost a while.

Limbs Protecting Part of Cut

I've recovered a lot of silver US coins from eroding dunes that look just like this.  You might not be interested in US coins, but anytime you find a concentration of older coins it is worth looking, because there can be something else interesting with them.

I've talked about signal finds in the past.  Coins can be "signal finds."  That means that they provide information that can lead to other finds.  

Always try to figure out what your finds might be telling you.   That goes for any find.  On a beach, a find almost always tells you something.  How did it get there?   How long has it been there?  What does it tell you about the people that have been there in the past and what they were doing?  What does it tell you about other detectorists - how they hunted, where they hunted or didn't hunt, what they discriminated out, what they missed?   The distribution of objects of different materials, size, shape, age, and density?

That type of information can be provided by finds - both junk finds and otherwise.   Again, that is why I seldom discriminate.  Even junk can tell you something important.   Junk can tell you where to better spend your time and where not to spend your time.  Who doesn't want to know that.  There is simply too much beach to cover it all, so you want to know where to concentrate your efforts.

The coins that I found in front of this cut were all heavily encrusted.  Not a single new shiny coin in the bunch.   I'll get into what that says some other time, maybe tomorrow.



Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Forecast and Conditions.

Not much has changed.  Seas are around two to three feet, peaking later today and tomorrow at around four feet.   That's not enough to change conditions much.

Low tide is around mid-day.

The wind is now more easterly.  That probably means less accumulation of shells and light materials.  They seem to accumulate more during more southerly winds.

Anyhow, not much change that you will notice.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net