Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Hurricane Nate caused a lot of flooding and road and beach closures in the western Florida Panhandle. There is a storm surge and still high waves.
I wanted to talk a little about the blog poll today. I had a lot of information entered and lost it so I'll start over. I'll do a little now, and if I have the patience, more later.
The current blog poll should provide some good and interesting information. It will unoubtedly give us some good insight but also leave some unanswered questions. Already the early responses made it clear that cobs are found other places than on the Treasure Coast. That isn't surprising, but those of us who live here focus so much on the Treasure Coast, that we might not think much of hunting other areas of Florida and the world. It is always fun to travel and detect new places.
People have reported cob finds from both other areas of Florida and areas outside of Florida. As you probably know, cobs can be found on the West Coast of Florida, Canaveral area, West Florida, and many other places. I have regular readers from North Carolina and other states and regions where cobs are found.
I am hoping that you will take the little time necessary to respond to the poll, because when we have good information we all win. You don't need to be afraid of giving away your favorite spot. The poll covers five years and does not tell anyone what area is hot now or next week or next year. And we all know that things change.
In retrospect, I wish I would have specified a longer time period than five years. Hurricane Sandy was about five years ago, and I'd like you to include that time period. Since then beach detecting conditions on the Treasure Coast have been poor more than not.
If you read this blog and get anything out of my free work, I hope you'll make a contribution in the form of your response to the polls.
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There was an 8-mile stretch of beach that I detected frequently in the 1990s. I looked at it as consisting of 15 different zones.
The first zone was a very narrow swimming beach where a lot of people crowded on nice days. It produced a lot of good quality jewelry on a regular basis.
Moving north and going around a bend was what I considered zone 2. This was a longer and wider shallow-water area that produced significantly less jewelry, and the jewelry there was of a significantly lower quality, even though the area was still in the same park.
Moving farther north was zone 3 - a dead zone. Almost nothing came out of there. It was in front of a condo, but it seemed few people from that condo ever went outdoors, let alone swimming.
Zone 4 was the next area, which was in front of a condo or resort that was closed. The beach there produced relatively little, but on a few occasions when the beach eroded, you could find good coin lines with a little jewelry on the eroded slope.
Zone 5 was a private beach club. A lot of people went to the beach and swam there. I found less there than I thought I should and always suspected there was somebody else that cleaned that location regularly. I wouldn't doubt if it was some of the staff of the club. They didn't like me being there and I once was told I couldn't detect there, but I knew better. I called the county offices and they told me the public had every right to use that beach back to the erosion control markers. Public tax dollars maintained that part of the beach.
Zone 6 was another dead zone. One or two nice pieces came out of the shallow water even though it was covered with sea grass and had lot of aluminum junk.
Zone 7 was around a sand spit that extended out into the shallow water where a lot of boaters parked. The interesting feature of this zone was the remains of a wreck under the beach where the sand bar joined.
Zone 8 was a good hole. It was in front of an active high-scale resort. Not as many items as in zone 1, but higher quality. Some very good finds came from there even though there was known competition. I believe that it was resort staff. A fellow stood and watched me working the water one day and left cursing when he saw me dig a gold chain in very shallow water. I could tell that a lot of my finds from there were not the easy finds and were things somebody could easily miss.
Continuing north some more, next was zone 9, another condominium. This one had more active people and produced a few good finds. It was much better than the other condominiums but not nearly as good as a few of the other zones.
Zone 10 was long dead zone.
Zone 11 was a big public park with a huge shallow swimming area. This swimming area would produce very few coins but almost always a piece of gold or two. It was visited by more detectorists than any other zone other than possibly zone 1.
Zone 12 was at the north end of the parking areas. Most park visitors stayed in the main swimming area just south of there. Zone 12 was a relatively small area where it seemed people parked before the paved parking was put in. This area produced coins and jewelry dating back into the 1800s.
Zone 13 was larger and had a much lower concentration of coins. The quantity of finds was low and the quantity was no better than average.
Zone 14 was rock outcropping that was usually covered by sand, however after one storm there was a virtual carpet of older silver coins and jewelry there.
The next zone (zone 15) was a small area where people in the past evidently parked along the road and visited the nearby small beach. The coins there were generally mid to early 1900s. They were usually very heavily corroded.
I have a number of reasons for going through the list, but mainly wanted to give some idea of how you should get to know your beaches as potential detecting sites.
I might expand on this some other time in the near future..
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Sunday the wind is from the south and the surf is down again. There is a nice high tide today though.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
