Gulf Beach hunting tips

I would like to start by saying, I own all of Gary Drayton and Clive's books on beach hunting. I have NASA Tom's DVD on beach hunting. And still, these gulf beaches throw me way off because to me, they are so different than an ocean beach. To me, there is no discernible tide change. I've been to beaches on the Atlantic side where the difference between high and low tides were what seems like 100 yards or more. On the gulf beaches, I really don't see a tide difference. If anything, the only difference I see is influenced more by rough waves or calmer waves.

So, here is a picture from the typical gulf side beach condo. I have been to several beaches along the gulf coast and nearly all of them look identical; the difference being more of water clarity.

20191013_171047 by Daniel Teague, on Flickr

You have the typical white powder sand that is dredged in. This stuff is heck to walk in. Very easy to roll an ankle. Then you get to the waters edge, and there's only about 3-4 feet of wet sand, and then a steep drop into a trough right at the waters edge. This trough is several feet wide, then goes up onto a shallow sand bar that runs parallel with the shore line. Then on the backside of the sand bar, is slightly deeper water. If the water is slightly rough at all, you will get beat to death in the water. I have hunted beaches like this several times and have yet to figure out any pattern to them. No concentration of targets...in fact, the water is usually dead. I have found a few targets here and there in the little area of wet sand where it is smoothed out, including one 10k ring. Otherwise, I end up walking miles up and down the shore line, in front of miles of condos, and have only found coins on the shore. None in the water, and not even junk jewelry. I have to be missing something somewhere.

1 factor is probably that condo dwellers are more likely to leave their jewelry and money inside.

That steep dropoff you are referring to can be common when sand is imported artificially. Just have to wait for the tides/currents to sort it back to what nature wants it to be.

I hunt similar conditions on Texas beaches. Best areas(read consistent) for me are access points(near stairs or paths) onto the sand, also where people congregate or sit(chair line). Hunting the wet sand or water is iffy due to the sink rate. We have no hard shell or bed rock for several feet, so unless you hunt during or very soon after a busy day or holiday weekend, all that nice heavy gold is out of reach. Of course there are always exceptions.

I have figured out when on vacation, you just take the hand you are dealt and make the best of it. Conditions may not be the best but you just gotta roll with them.

I have been at Laguna Beach near Panama all week and have detected nearly every day and night. One day I stayed out for over 8 hours walking and detecting. I focused on a pier off in the distance and just kept walking to it. I ended up at it and then hunted back. Turns out, that was nearly 3 miles from our condo, one way. In that walk, I learned where stuff was and where it wasn't. In the wet oatmeal sand, there is little to nothing. If you walk in it and bury up while walking, just keep walking. When I started seeing black sand streaks, the sand would always firm up and support my weight....not sink down in it. It was always in those sections of beach that I would start finding the heavies....coins - quarters, dimes, nickels, etc. These sections were usually not very big but every one of them contained items. I found the same in the water. In the immediate trough before the sand bar closest to shore that is where I found lots of lite weight trash. Never any coins, or heavies. Past the sand bar on the back side, is where I would find scattered coins. Only found 2 rings this trip, one 10 k with small diamond and a silver wedding band.

Hunted with the CTX 3030 and Nox 800. They both got equal use. I much prefer the CTX in the water, and the Nox on the land. The Nox gets knocked around too easy in the water by waves and current. Will post some pictures when I get back home. The newest update for the 800 is GREAT....no more crown caps unless you just wanna dig them now. Both are equally deep..I did not see an edge to either one in that regard. The Nox gets the nod if you are a screen watcher, cause with the CTX while in the sun and wearing sunglasses, you can't see anything. At night it is great with the backlight.

The Gulf is great at letting us hunt year around with fewest days we cant get in the water. I hunted St. Augustine and Savanna recently.......thats a challenge too for us Gulf hunters we aint used to all that open sand when the tide is out. Thats also why i spend most of my time IN the water...... thats have your beach so to speak that you can only take advantage of when the tide goes out on the coast. So as a Gulf hunter the tides isnt quit as important when i decide to hunt. Just curious if you have ever read Norms page...... he has some good information. He past years ago but the info is still very valuable. [web.archive.org]

You can learn to read a beach....... for that day..... but the real advantage come is knowing the beach. Locals have that huge advantage. There are spots that have a consistency to produce and we know when to try the right beach based on condition to give us a better chance. You also have to change your mind set.... get away from listening more to those high tones and try zeroing in on the mid to lowers. Some of the guys i even tell ..... try disc out iron and anything above a penny for awhile. Their disadvantage is knowing what weak gold sounds like. Almost no one misses a reasonable shallow recent drop big piece of gold if they go over it. BUT what dirt hunters do seem to do very very well is grid. In the water they can really do better than some of the locals who tend to just run the trough where they think gold is. We also know where the towel lines are or were based on the season...... or even yesterday..... both in and out of the water if we are chasing recent drops. I felt as challenged as you on St Augustine i wasnt hunting in the water. So that beach seemed huge at low tide after seeing it a high. All the cars were way up high near the dunes..... and thats where people were. Then at low tide...... people were still up high .... but were taking the long walk to the water and swimming out deeper. For me it was read the beach...... hit the low spots and those spots i felt might be flip up areas that waves might have moved some deeper targets to the shallows ..... normally just above those low areas. Those Jersey hunters seem to be exceptionally well at working those long tide swings.

Quote
Danial Tn
I have figured out when on vacation, you just take the hand you are dealt and make the best of it. Conditions may not be the best but you just gotta roll with them.

You called it.

Taking vacations...One can only hope they nailed a good week.

Six years of hunting the Chesapeake Bay and I'm still learning every trip out. Since I live near the bay I can go when conditions are best to hunt, plus recon is a big thing for me, foot work finding those hot spots.

Blood Member of RingKeepers
2020......Gold Rings....73....Misc Gold 1 .......Silvers ...110

OBN Wrote:
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>

Quote
Danial Tn
> I have figured out when on vacation, you just take
> the hand you are dealt and make the best of it. Co
> nditions may not be the best but you just gotta ro
> ll with them.
>

>
>
> You called it.
>
> Taking vacations...One can only hope they nailed a
> good week.
>
> Six years of hunting the Chesapeake Bay and I'm st
> ill learning every trip out. Since I live near th
> e bay I can go when conditions are best to hunt, p
> lus recon is a big thing for me, foot work finding
> those hot spots.


What detector(s) were you using to find all those rings?

OBN...…. I absolutely love tracking your ratio of: Gold Rings found......vs.....Gold non-Rings found!

((( I have had several [independent from each other] jewelers tell me that: "gold rings are one of the LEAST lost items (hence/subsequently; least replaced item)…… as compared to all other forms of jewelry ))).

Gulf beaches have little or no wave action compared to the Atlantic coast. I would assume more jewelry would be removed from their owners where there is more wave action.
If you have ever gotten knocked into a head over heels tailspin, slammed to the ocean floor then not knowing which way was up, you'll know what I mean.

If there will ever be a detector that can detect a small linked chain with nothing else on them and detect it at 10-12 inches deep in salt water, I will purchase it and move to the coast.

Ozzie...... i dont know if you would. Well unless they figure out how to just ID gold as well. Thats a tall order (dream) just seeing what kind of trash the Nox will get you in that range .... and frankly its skimming the surface for those chains now leaving most of the micro gold inches down.

Joe does exceptionally well Tom. But he hunts those long forgotten beaches with his hot Xcal in PP mode (while he waits on the AQ lol). They are time consuming to get to. Id say its a lot like when i used to field hunt. I had old maps that showed the old roads and OLD HOMES/FARMS. Hunting those old long gone places eliminated sooooooo much modern trash and your finds .... you could count on were old. His spots dont have all these crappy modern rings we have to sift thru.

My back aches every time you do a vedio of you out there Joe...... not to mention the get-up you have to get into in the winter up there.

Daniel ..... you learn something every time you get out there and add it to your play book. Beach hunting can leave even the experienced guys scratching their heads at the end of the day when they look at their finds.

I am a bit envious of you guys that get to call the beach home. I guess it is perspective. A lot of people come to my area and love it here due to the mountains and all that stuff. I've seen all that my whole life, so it is no big deal to me. Actually in some cases, it can be a burden and thorn in the flesh having to deal with the extra population of tourists that come to this area. I guess the locals to the beach areas get tired and weary of tourists too. Especially when what should be a short trip to the grocery store can turn into an adventure dealing with the extra people.

I could do that kind of detecting all day and never grow tired of it. I was actually on vacation with my niece, nephew and their family and had to keep that in mind, or I would have done my own thing and stayed gone all day and night out detecting. We capped it off with a drive down the coast to Gulf Shores, then back up through Alabama to make it to Tuscaloosa for the Bama vs Vols football game. Great time.

Here should be a few pics for those of you interested. We did sleep right through the tropical storm and woke up to some very angry water. They had moved the beach chairs back and when I left, I could see the sand had been taken away and smoothed out....was alot of that black sand stuff down there. I wish I could have detected that day down there but we had to make an early checkout that morning. One of the pictures shows the 2 rings I found and the sharks tooth, or what I think is one. One day, the water was slick as glass and super clear water. I had a blast that day. Shell Island was also fun for me and the kids...super clear water and we brought back 2 big shell bags of large shells.

DSCF2054 by Daniel Teague, on Flickr

20191019_072745 by Daniel Teague, on Flickr

20191017_135331 by Daniel Teague, on Flickr

DSC08548 by Daniel Teague, on Flickr

20191019_200000 by Daniel Teague, on Flickr

Nice photos. Looks like you're having fun out in the water.

D&P-OR Wrote:
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> OBN Wrote:
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> -----
> >

Quote
Danial Tn
>
>
>
> What detector(s) were you using to find all those
> rings?

Minelab Excalibur, but not stock..using a stock machine would kill me. I use a Modified setup, My skullie tube headphones, hunt in PP/All metal, reverse discrimination, then a few other tweaks, with stock coils only. Many of the gold rings I dig will only give a signal coming in from one angle, and a few just a signal on the swing, from right to left and ............not on the return.

Tom my guess on the Gold to non gold rings would be for ever 2/3 gold rings, I'll dig 1 junk ring.

Blood Member of RingKeepers
2020......Gold Rings....73....Misc Gold 1 .......Silvers ...110

Joe..... copy! But...……………………. I'm looking at the ratio of rings......vs...…. things that are NOT 'rings'. (NOT annular). That's a critical (engineering) data-point.

Good example of knowing the beach. We just had that storm in the Gulf..... it removed and spreaded out a good 3' of sand into the water. BUT..... there was absolutely nothing there in the now longer beach. That sand will all come back in correlated..... the gulfs way of renurishment. This beach is about 1/2 mile long but i see more people with detectors there than any beach i hunt. They hunt the dry sand with PIs even. I get a chuckle when a snow bird hunter says my detector gets nearly 2' so ill get the deep stuff. I let them know .... you are better off covering more beach because your detector needs to get 4'. Some beaches are just better recent drop beaches.

We are in the process of our annual flood of snow birds. The traffic gets crazy...... but we have to remember something..... most of us were snow birds........and this keeps our small town stores and restaurants going. You get to meet some interesting people on the beach as well. I must have talked to a dozen people yesterday who stopped me.

The curious people on the beach always get me. I seem to be a beacon for them. Then there's the one upper people you run into. Had one guy tell me he had found 3 Rolex watches at the beach in front of the condo we were staying in. I was thinking to myself...yeah okay, sure you did. He asked me what my best find was and I told him I had found a sword engraved to George A. Custer that had a solid gold pommel on it. Hey...I can BS with em too LOL Had an older lady (well she was older to me...probably in her late 50s) that stopped me. She wanted her a little of Daniel Tn. Tried to get me to come over to her beach house several times and even said she had a metal detector in her room but didn't know how to use it, and would like my help. You run into all kinds.

The craziest of crazy happened to me though. Was making my way down the beach and this guy stopped to talk to me as I was scooping a target. He talked to me for a good bit and I kept thinking to myself "who does this guy remind me of...he reminds me of somebody I know". A few days later, my wife and I were fishing at one of the piers and I had went to get something and come back....saw her talking to this man and woman couple. As I got closer, I saw it was the guy from the beach that had talked to me. I said "Hey I think I talked to you the other day...I was the guy metal detecting" and we had a laugh about how small the world seems some times. We talked to them for about 15 more minutes and he was telling me that several years ago he had ran into another couple on the beach and then ran into them again a few days later...kinda the same circumstances, and he said "Sometimes we run into situations where the world seems a bit smaller". He then started telling me about what he did for a hobby and it clicked in my head as soon as he started.....I KNOW THIS GUY because he had a very unique hobby of bronze sculptures. He had done some for a few universities, including the colliding rams for a Colorado university. I then said "Did you guys happen to vacation in Orange Beach or Gulf Shores about 3 or 4 years ago in October?". He looked at his wife and then back at me "Yes....why do you ask". I smiled immediately. I said....well friend, the world just got a whole lot smaller. Because WE were that couple you are talking about running into. Sure enough, it turns out we were. That just blew my mind.

wow. crazy story!

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You can see my videos here: [www.youtube.com]
My blog is here: [thesilverfiend.com]

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Wow Daniel, that is a mind blower....what are the odds?

NASA-Tom Wrote:
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> Joe..... copy! But...……………………. I'm looking at the
> ratio of rings......vs...…. things that are NOT 'r
> ings'. (NOT annular). That's a critical (engineeri
> ng) data-point.

The target history is going to change soon. The two spots I've been hitting since June 30th are starting to slow down, so it is time start looking for something better.''

Blood Member of RingKeepers
2020......Gold Rings....73....Misc Gold 1 .......Silvers ...110

"she wanted some of Ole Daniel Tn"--Sorry Daniel it was your NOX that she wanted. According to the Noxers everyone in the world wants a Nox. LOL