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Gold in the Surf

25 May 2012

An unexpected change of work plans had me looking forward to taking a trip down to Miami Beach before the weekend and having a relaxing water hunt with the CTX 3030. That was until I saw the weather forecast warning of a tropical depression bringing torrential rain and rough surf to the coast of South Florida the morning I had planned to go water hunting. To make things worse I would be hitting the water off Miami Beach on the incoming tide which makes water hunting that more difficult. I decided that a rainy wind swept beach void of tourists and other beach hunter’s was just too good of an opportunity to pass up so I grabbed my waterproof CTX 3030 and hit the road. To say it was rough was an understatement, the surf was raging and the rain was biting so I chose to play it safe and hunt just inside the first drop off in the water and work my way past a large section of sun loungers. My settings this morning with the CTX 3030 was a modified Beach Mode designed to get the finds that I expected to recover in such conditions. Jewelry, coins and trash tend to get thrown closer to shore during times of high surf and get deposited in the first drop off in the water. You really need a good waterproof discriminating metal detector like the CTX 3030 to pick the good finds from the bad finds in this high target area. Upon entering the water I quickly found myself waist deep and getting pushed around by the surf, I used my heavy stainless steel scoop to help anchor me in place as I swept my search coil thru the water and began to slowly work my way forward in the water. As expected, I started to find coins in numbers which were quite easy to identify individually by their distinctive audio tones and cursor placements on the detect screen. Hunting in the shallow water you learn to make every move count so I made the decision to not scoop the obvious penny targets and just concentrate on recovering high probability gold and silver targets. The CTX 3030 gives you much more target information than any other metal detector I have ever used. It is an ideal metal detector for this kind of situation when the surf and current make target retrieval very difficult. The end of the line of sun beds was approaching and I was beginning to think about moving to another site when I heard that mellow low tone that makes any beach or water hunter snap to attention. The last thing I wanted to do was lose this possible good target so I slowly swept the 11 inch smart coil over the target and began to time my scooping in the water with the incoming waves. I raised my scoop basket out of the water and saw a gold chain draped over the edge of the scoop basket, tilting the scoop the gold chain fell safely into my scoop basket.The 14K gold chain that I placed in my finds pouch was a nice reward for sticking to my game plan by going metal detecting during the stormy conditions. Gold chains are notoriously difficult for some metal detectors to identify so this find is also a testament to the sensitivity and discriminating capabilities of my metal detector. Happy hunting! Gary Drayton - Florida, USA

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