What placer gold is, why it ends up in streams, and how a first trip should look.
Placer gold is gold that has been freed from its host rock by weathering and moved by water. It sits loose in gravel, sand and cracks of a stream bed rather than locked inside a vein. Almost all hobby prospecting is placer prospecting.
Rock that carries gold breaks down over long periods. Rain and gravity carry the pieces downhill into streams, where the water sorts them by weight. Gold is far heavier than the sand around it, so it drops out first and stays where the current slows.
Gold is roughly seven times denser than quartz sand. That difference is the whole basis of prospecting: any moving water that carries sand will drop gold long before it drops the sand, and any pan that washes sand away keeps the gold behind.
No. You need to understand one idea: heavy things stop where water slows. Everything else — reading bends, bars, bedrock and junctions — is that idea applied to a real valley. Geology helps later, when you want to know why one valley carries gold and its neighbour does not.
Pick one stream with a known history or a strong catchment, walk it with a pan and a small shovel, and sample three or four different trap spots. The goal of a first trip is to learn how the pan behaves and where the black sand collects, not to bring home gold.
An afternoon to get the motion, a season to get fast at it. Most people lose fine gold in the first few pans by washing too aggressively; practise with a few lead shot or a known flake until you keep every one of them.
No. A stream only carries gold if there is a gold source somewhere in its catchment — a vein, an old placer, a mineralised zone. Trap geometry tells you where gold would settle if it is there; it does not put gold into a valley that has none.
Informal size words. Flakes are flat and small, the kind you find with a pan; a picker is a piece large enough to pick up with your fingers; a nugget is bigger still and rare. Most placer gold is fine flakes and dust.
Fine gold is flake so thin it behaves almost like sand in water — surface tension and turbulence can float it away. Catching it takes slow, careful panning and clean water; losing it is the most common beginner mistake.
It does not have to be. A pan, a small shovel, a snuffer bottle and a vial are the whole starter kit. The real cost is time and fuel driving to streams; that is why choosing the right valley before you leave matters more than any tool.
Better not, especially on unfamiliar streams. Wet rock, cold water and remote valleys are unforgiving of a twisted ankle. If you do go alone, tell someone your stream and your return time.
The catchment of a point on a stream is all the land that drains to it. Everything that erodes upstream — including any gold — passes through that point. A bigger, steeper catchment with mineralised rock in it feeds more gold to the traps below.
Small and medium creeks close to the source are usually better for a person with a pan. Big rivers spread gold thin across wide beds and bury it deep; small creeks concentrate it in reachable traps. The best is often the middle: a creek big enough to move gravel but small enough to walk.
Coarse gold moves only a short way and stays close to the source; fine gold can travel far downstream over long periods. As a rule of thumb, gold gets finer, rounder and sparser the further you go from the source.
The narrow band on a stream bed where most of the gold has concentrated — usually the line the current takes at flood, on the inside of bends and along bedrock. Finding the pay streak is the whole game; sampling across the bed is how you find it.
Because no rule is absolute — streams change course, floods rework gravel, and a rich pocket can sit where theory says it should not. The saying is a reminder to sample rather than argue with the stream. Theory tells you where to sample first.
Bedrock is the solid rock under the loose gravel of a stream bed. Gold works its way down through gravel until it hits bedrock and stops. Cracks, ledges and potholes in bedrock are the richest traps a stream has.
A hard layer — packed clay, cemented gravel or a volcanic flow — that stops gold from sinking further even though it is not true bedrock. It traps gold the same way real bedrock does, and sometimes there is more gravel and gold beneath it.
Yes, and dry beds are often easier to read because the traps are exposed. You will need to carry water to a pan or use a dry-washing method. Look for the same things: inside bends, bedrock, the downstream side of boulders.
Low water. After floods have reworked the bed and the level has dropped, the traps are exposed and safe to reach. High water hides everything and is dangerous.
Old mine workings, tailing piles, historical records and geological maps showing mineralised rock in the catchment are the strongest signs. Where none exist, indicator minerals and a few test pans are your evidence.
Sampling, then writing down what you found and where. A prospector who tests ten spots and records them learns a valley in one season; one who digs one big hole learns one hole.
For almost everyone, no — treat it as a way to read landscapes and spend days in valleys. Anyone who tells you a stream will pay for your equipment is selling equipment.
How water sorts sediment. Once you understand why a bar forms on the inside of a bend and why gravel sits in a pool tail, every other technique follows. This guide’s "Where gold collects" section is that lesson.
It does the terrain reading before you leave: it scores every stream segment in a region for trap geometry so you can pick a valley and a few spots to sample. It does not tell you gold is there — the pan does that.
GOLDONGO scores entire stream networks for the trap geometry this guide describes — slope breaks, inside bends, junctions and bedrock. Pick your region and see where it stands.
This guide is general education, not advice for a specific place. A score, a map or a sentence here is not a licence to dig: the rules for prospecting, land access and protected areas differ from place to place — learn the ones that apply where you are before you go.