Where I live in California is near the Yuba Gold Fields and I do go out searching from time to time a few old timer diggings in my local area. The area where I found the nugget is in Yuba County California, which still has areas that contain deposits of gold and gold sands. It was actually an area where Chinese were working a stream and left huge piles of aggregate during the gold rush. There are many promising faint signals there, but the last time I was there the ground was way to hard for digging. I have since purchased a nice lesche prospecting pick and am hoping to go back there in a few weeks to get through red soil. That nugget was a surprise for me. I had pretty much spent my day with three others there detecting a 1800s home site, sifting through the square nails when I found the only coin so far to come out of there. A lovely V nickel. That was when I went exploring and found the digging site. After several old rimfire cartridges and old shotgun shells, I heard a mid tone that had a bit of an iron grunt. I was searching in all metal as I do when relic hunting. I had to dig at the ground with my lesche trowel for a good 20 minutes to get 6 inches to the target. (Did I mention the ground is very hard?) At first I thought I had a piece of melted lead that was covered in red clay. I took a swig from my camel back and spit some water on the lump and I saw that yellow color. My first thought was "they will never invite me to come back here again!" I walked to my good friend and told him I had something good. I asked him to hand me his shovel and then placed it in his hand. It was unbelievable.