<p><strong>Last Saturday I decided to get out and enjoy the unusual, for January, weather here in N. Calif.</strong> I met my partner Reno Jim and headed for a spot we've hunted for years. We didn't expect to find anything, maybe a crumb that had been overlooked in all the trash. It was just a good day to get some exercise after the holidays.</p> [split] <p>While Jim worked the banks digging trash, I started up a dry creek bed rechecking exposed bedrock I'd already hunted before. I came to a spot where a 10 ft. section of new bedrock has been exposed. It looked like a gully washer had come through and blown off the overburden. It was just above a spot I had done well at in years past. I wasn't expecting anything as I had seen fresh dig holes further downstream. Within a foot of hitting the new bedrock I got a good signal which I knew for sure was a bullet. I scraped a bit of dirt off and the signal was gone. Checking the dirt, there it was, right on top, a nice little 1.5 dwter. Wow, that was easy. I wonder how that got missed. I moved another foot up stream, and bang, another signal. Again, I was sure it was trash, it was so big and loud. This one I checked with the pulse delay to see if it went away like a nail, but it was still there, so again, thinking it's a bullet, I scraped off the dirt and got the signal in the cup. It couldn't be a nugget, that first one was a fluke, the only one in all that bedrock. But, sure enough, out rolled an ugly 3 dwter encased in red quartz! At this point I thought I'd better call Jim over to hunt the rest of the spot. He'd been on a long dry spell. He hunted that spot the rest of the day but could only come up with one tiny little .1 dwt grain.</p> <p>I left him to clean it out and moved further upstream. Around the corner was more bedrock that I had hunted at least a dozen times over the years. A couple of nails later came a loud booming nail signal right in a little pocket of rock. And again, scraping the dirt out with the pick, again, I look down and see a huge flat nugget just laying there. I couldn't believe it! How could I have missed it before? Because it was SO big and loud, I just passed it up KNOWING it was trash. Geezz, you think I would know better by now. Glad I wasn't hearing nearly the iron trash of years past because I was using my TDI SL in low conductivity which knocks out the larger iron. We were both using the TDI SL with the 9x5 Jimmy loop.</p> <p>So, by the end of the day, we each had found one more small piece for a total of just over 1/2 oz. The big unly slug weighs 5.7 dwt.</p>