Very Nice Gavin. Good for you mate. 
JW 
Nice haul there Gav, very nice
Hi Guys, The long weekend Mrs JW & I went away in the caravan. During the day it was too bloody hot to roam the hills detecting so we went for a tiki tour. Took a mate to the old Garibaldi Diggings. He had never been there before.
Couple of old huts there.
This one a bit worse for wear & tear.
We drove to Styx & then did part of the Old Dunstan Trail through to Pool Burn Dam & back down into the Ida Valley. I should have got some pics of Pool Burn Dam but I was lazy & didn’t. It is stunning up there. Was land of Rohan in lord of the rings. Mrs JW took some pics so I might try to get them off her & put them up.
Still had a bit of a drive to get back to the caravan & at 7pm I decided to go detecting in the cooler part of the evening. Only got a few hours in before dark. Using the 15" Concentric X coil on the Zed I was shocked to get two tiny bits in ground I have hammered.
They weren’t deep but missed by all my other detectors & coil combos over the years . Even the VLF gold detectors.
Next day was another hot one so only did a couple of hours before we had to hitch up the caravan & head home. I went back to the same area & detecting right in the very bottom of an old timer turned over dry gully got a faint signal. It lived on down & got better with depth when I was into tight packed gravels.
You will just make out the tip of my green scoop. That is 12"
The signal out
Smaller than I thought it was going to be for the depth & the strong signal
Before back filling the hole I re scanned & got another signal. The coil being too big to pinpoint exactly where the signal was in the hole I went to my wagon & got the Gold Monster. Bloody hell 4 bits later to the Gold Monster.
I then checked the hole again with the Zed & the 15" coil & another signal. More digging & more gold. All up 10 from this one dig. I called it quits at that as I was hot & bothered & happy with my result.
Cheers
Good luck out there
JW
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Wow awesome finds, nice gold !
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Excellent, JW! That 15” X-Coil seems to work a treat.
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Hi there EoinC. The 15" X coil is a concentric wound coil. So different from the usual DOD wound configuration of the windings in the “standard” GPZ 7000 coils. So it is very sensitive for a bigger coil but each coil sweep needs to be more tightly overlapped so that the inverted cone shaped detecting pattern generated into the ground doesn’t miss anything at the deepest point. Bit like a mono coil detection paten but tighter again. Cheers.
JW
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Hi, JW.
Thank you for the info. Understanding capabilities and limitations is an important part of effectiveness. It is always encouraging to see you finding gold in areas you have already covered.
The Russian X-Coils are very impressive, given that the standard GPZ 7000 is a high benchmark to work from. The 15” looks like a practical sweetspot for Otago.
Keep up the great work - I really enjoy your write-ups, and recognise that winning small gold says more than winning big gold.
Cheers, Eoin
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Hi guys and girls
couple of pics from couple of days at louis Creek 2weeks ago outrageous stuff for two days! very surprising considering how hammered it is 💁
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Thanks for sharing mate ! What a haul did u work a similar spot to the 2.1 gram spot a while back ?chasing the bedrock a .il definitely have to come check ya creek out now lol
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Cheers Daniel
probably 5metres away!
had been walking over this spot for 2 years and everytime think maybe I’ll dig there 
can’t really get to the bottom because of the massive boulders 
you do get some pretty good pieces there 
someone got a good dig in last week tho 
I’m sure they did very well:person_tipping_hand:IMG_20210221_143208|666x500
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Looks like a nice spot. Shane you can’t move a boulder. I’m down south and never been there but why is there a gap in the creek where you can’t prospect.
Wow that’s a great haul! Very impressive
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Great going. A fantastic sample of gold…she dont tell anyone as there will be a mini gold rush.
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private land I think! 🤷 access only through the riverbed! but if you walk up from the bottom it would appear it’s not the case because there’s still plenty of digging it seems 🤦
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Funny. You never know sometimes.
That is bloody awesome. Good for you. 
You obviously put in the hard yards & get down deep, which is the key.
Best of luck out there
JW
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Detected gold from last weekend. Minelab GPZ 7000 & the reasonably new Russian made 15" Concentric wound X coil. Settings, high yield, normal & full max sensitivity of 20. Runs like a dream & quiet as…
Very first signal in about one minute from rigging up & getting into it.
After getting that I checked the dig out pile, as I always do before backfilling the hole, & ended up getting 4 more smaller pieces. There was every chance there was going to be more even smaller pieces that that big coil wasn’t going to get. So I placed a big flat slab of schist over the hole, the one to the right in the first photo, thinking I would come back the following weekend with the Gold Monster to scan over it.
I carried on detecting & this was my end result for that day with that big coil.
There was a signal I got that was in the solid schist bedrock. I chipped away at it with my pick but it was hard as heel & giving my pick a bit of grief so I gave it a miss & decided I would bring my battery powered hammer/impact drill when I came back.
So yesterday I headed back with my Gold monster & the hammer drill. I went straight to my previous hole with the GM & I got about 8 or 9 little pieces from that dig out pile. I then rigged up with the GPZ & that same 15" coil & went back to that schist bedrock with the hammer drill. I will let the pics tell the story.
Only ended up being .44 of a gram. I only got about 3 other pieces with the GPZ & that 15" coil & the day was dragging on with long dry spells so I decided to go back to that first hole with the GM & rip out the hole more. Well that paid off & I got another 8 or 9 bits.
Total for the day, 24, & a lot of fun with the Gold monster mopping up those crumbs. With the majority coming from that one dig hole.
Good luck out there
JW
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Awesome. After seeing you with ya hammer drill jw I purchased the 36v makita version and I too have a spot to try it on . I Love the monster as you say tiny gold and so user friendly
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Had a bad first 9 days with a few specs exploring then got lucky in a hell of a crack where I pulled 99% of this out of!
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nice haul mate good and chunky makes me want to get back out there well done thanks for showing us ya gold
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