Flash in the Pan Blog

As many of you have heard announced at our last Member’s Hootenanny, Prospectors Plus has begun manufacturing on our very own line of hand sluices, high bankers, sluice stands and cleanup gear tuned for prospecting in the toughest of conditions. Our goal is to ensure that all our friends, members and neighbors have access to high quality, durable, effective and low cost gold prospecting and mining gear. Lowering the barrier entry to as many people as possible to enjoy our hobby has been a dream we’ve wanted to realize for a long time. Today we take a step forward on making that dream a reality.

With the work week behind us, ol’ Uno and I were quite excited to spend early Sunday morning out on Olney Creek following the gold streak we were playing with last week. We figured that if we started early enough, we could get a couple of hours prospecting for gold in before heading back to the house to catch the Seattle Seahawks hopefully beating down Chicago to cinch the playoffs. Unfortunately for us, it has been raining heavily over the past couple of days so that when we arrived at 8am Olney was moving fast. It didn’t take long for us to figure out that there just wasn’t a safe place to cross to where we wanted to dig.

Wouldn’t yeah know it, but our very own club president Larry Nye and his diabolical son Cody have used the downtime of the holiday break to poke around on the Olney claim and ended up running across a great stash of gold. As Larry puts it, “There is nothing like spending a few days with your son in a place like Olney Creek.”

When storms hit hard, many experienced prospectors head out to the fields, not to dig for gold but to spend time examining their favorite areas at flood. Seeing the dramatic changes in water flow, water pressures and eddies can be vital clues for your next prospecting adventure.

I guess with all the rush getting ready for my families vacation to Florida, I missed forwarding on a great story about a record-breaking gold find from the historic Black Hills of South Dakota. On September 13th, the Holly Meyer of the Rapid City Journal reported that a find made by two recreational gold prospectors, turned out to be largest gold nugget recovered in the last 120 years from the Black Hills area.

There are many demands for our time and attention in the modern world. While many of us recreational-type gold prospectors would love to ditch it all and head out to the wilds of nature for weeks at a time to indulge in our favorite hobby, few can feasibly do it. I know I can’t. I also know that gold prospecting is a fickle beast and demands time, focus and thinking to transition from getting a “lucky find” now and then to figuring out where the “streaks” are and hitting them hard. To ensure that I make the most out of every trip, I ensure that my gear is put together and in working order, my car is topped off with gas and that I have done my homework and know where I am going and why.