Ok, I cleaned them! Is the source that far away??

[Tortuga]

You'll know when you find one, there's always a little bit of the purdy yellow shining through all the crud. I always pop them in my mouth too and give them a little cleaning. Once you get some of the clay off they'll shine really nice.

Except for that little 1 gram black gold nugget I found at Rich Hill. It was all black except for a little bit of yellow showing through. I thought maybe it was a little hematite pebble specimen with some gold specks in it. I showed it to Rob and he checked it out with a loupe and told me it was a solid gold nugget with a thin iron oxide coating. Pretty cool.

[DOC]

very pretty!!!

Doc did you line that cover with lead to decrease the EMI influences???? just kidding as i presume you were....

fred

Yup just making an outlandish claim, hence the smiley face,

Doc

[DOC]

Here ya go all, a little info that may come in handy.

Doc

I found this topic on one of your threads I was reading awhile back, but cant find it again and my answer will fit here too, soooo

I think I know why your finding large gold below smaller gold on that spot. your not the only one running into this puzzling situation. even though I have little info on your spot this could be whats causing this. there is a good chance the gold is eroding out of a vein running along a canyon wall to the left or right of the wash your finding the nuggets in. this will cause the nuggets to erode out and travel down the bank into the wash in random order because they haven't been reclassified by size by the creek or wash your finding them in yet. this also could mean they haven't been in the creek you found them in for very long, so they are coming in very close by where your finding them. also if the wash is fairly flat left to right and the nuggets your finding are lining up more along one side of the wash than the other. (this can give you a clue what side canyon the nuggets are in coming from). hope this helps.

Finding semi-virgin patches 101

If the wash was hand stacked by the old timers working it, hike to the top of their stacking, up at the top they almost always stacked the rocks higher up on one side of the wash than the other.

here is why.

They knew what side of the wash the gold was coming in from and stacked the rocks on the opposite side, behind them as they worked up it.

put your back to the highest stacked rocks in the wash and look up, your probably looking at the source of the gold. and a possible hillside patch.

There is a good chance you'll find an exploratory test dig hole(s) from the old timers up on the hillside too, they may be covered by brush and hard to see from below.

Why didn't they dig up the hillside and run it? because the gold may have been too scattered out for hand digging and not concentrated like the wash. That's were a detector comes in handy.

AzNuggetBob

Good stuff! Thank you for sharing.

Doc

[andyy]

Man .... I always love these posts by AZNuggetBob. <<semi-virgin patches 101>> These are great nuggets of information

[nuggethunting]

Hey Andy,

AZNuggetBob is a great friend. I actually just got off the phone with him last night, he's been pretty busy. He said he would get on the forums and post more information.

[FlakMagnet]

I too always look forward to AzNuggetBob's posts.

They usually reflect a lot of experience and thought.

Also when someone takes the time to share their experience,

there's bound to be something to learn.

Thanks Bob