Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
The surf is supposed to be only about one to two feet today despite the north wind, but the surf will increase tomorrow and get up to five to seven feet on Monday. That is a decent level of surf. Maybe it will help some.
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Some of what I'm going to talk about today will seem obvious to many of you. It is something like the discovery of gravity. It didn't take Isaac Newton to notice that apples fall, but he took it to another level.
On a beach, there will often be a flat dry beach and a wet-sand slope. Some guys hunt the flat dry beach more, and others the wet-sand slope.
There are significant difference between those two parts of the beach, and they present different types of targets and call for different strategies.
To begin with, the flat dry beach has a lot of items that were recently lost, while the slope very often presents targets that have been lost for a while but have been either washed in from the surf or washed out of the beach.
In general the dry beach presents more new targets while the slope presents somewhat older targets. The dry beach, though, can turn into a part of the slope when the water had been unusually high or rough.
Two ways for old items to end up on the flat dry beach is either by being washed up from the surf or down out of the dunes. Much less frequently old items are dropped on the dry sand. Detectorists have done that without knowing it. All it takes is a hole in a pocket or something like that.
Different search strategies will often be used on those two different areas. What I call recent-drops will dominate the flat dry sand, while there will often be more seasoned targets on the slope. The distribution of recent drops is determined by human activity, while the seasoned older items of the slope will be redistributed by the forces of nature.
One search pattern, if you can call it a pattern at all, is random. Some people will use a random pattern on both the dry and wet sand areas. I doubt that it is really a random pattern. I believe there is usually something that draws a person one way and then another, even if they aren't aware of what it is.
Some people might think that they are being guided by intuition or by some unseen force. In that case they might not feel like it is a random search even though it would look random to an outside observer.
To repeat, targets in the dry sand area are mostly distributed by human activity, while those in the wet sand are influenced more by forces of nature. Targets will therefore often be distributed differently in the two areas. In the wet sand you'll often find coin lines or coin holes. (I've described those in this blog before.)
Besides random or intuitive searches, running a grid can be effective in both types of area. When you use a grid search, a lot of time is spent covering a relatively small area thoroughly. My opinion is that a tight grid should only be used when you have reason to believe there is a concentration of targets in that area or there is a high value target in that area.
In the dry sand, a grid might be used in areas such as in front of concession stands, or in front of a beach access, or any place where there are a lot of people doing things that would result in good targets. Volleyball courts or where beach chairs are put out can be good places to grid.
In dry sand, you might also choose to go from hot spot to hot spot, going wherever it is apparent that people were active. People leave a lot of signs. You can see the churned sand where there was a football game, or the smoothed sand left by a beach blanket, or the trash left by beach goers. It isn't difficult to tell where people have been and what they were doing.
In the wet sand, a grid would be very advisable when you run into a area where items have accumulated and are being uncovered or deposited. You might have already found a few targets in the area, and think there might be more.
Instead of tracking people like you might do in the dry sand, you might want to run a looser pattern in the wet sand to see if there are any coin lines or coin holes where nature has dumped good targets. For the wet sand I often like zig-zag pattern running roughly along the beach between the waterline and high tide mark.
Just like in the dry sand, you will see signs that some areas in the wet sand might be better than others. Cuts are one good sign. You might just sample the area below a cut before committing to a tighter search pattern, zig-zagging first and then if it seems like it might be worthwhile, gridding.
One search pattern I introduced a number of years ago is a linked-spirals search pattern. I originally developed it for working rough shallow water with little or no visibility, but it has also proved very effective for working the wet sand. It will help you quickly determine if there is a coin line, and if so where it is located and the direction it runs. I won't describe the pattern in detail again. You can find that by using this link.
The linked spirals search pattern can begin as a zig-zag or straight line search and then change into a linked spirals pattern when the first target is encountered.
While I described the dry sand flat beach and wet sand slope as being different types of areas, they can overlap. The dry sand can be hit by high water and turned into a wet sand slope. And it is not extremely uncommon to find old objects washed up over the berm and onto the flat sand. In my experience, they are most often on the first few feet behind the berm, and often in or in front of a something of a shell line. Those are usually smaller targets such as half reales.
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I have my batteries charged and and am eager to see what happens Monday.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
I have my batteries charged and and am eager to see what happens Monday.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
