Tips, Techniques And Instructions On How To Pan For Gold

Read the stream bed or creek to find a good spot that likely will have gold in it.  One of the best spots is behind boulders where eddies have been created.  Fill up your gold pan with sand and/or gravel.  Either dip your gold pan into the creek to fill it up with water or just pour water directly into it.

Move your pan gently back and forth using a sideways motion.  Since gold is among the heaviest of all of the elements, it will have a tendency to sink to the bottom of the pan. After you've been performing this gentle motion for a couple of minutes, the materials will start to stratify in your pan.  The larger rocks and pebbles will be at the surface, while the heavier materials, including black sand (magnetite) and gold will be at the bottom of your pan.

Look through the surface material very carefully that is in your pan.  Take the larger rocks out.  Don't throw any nuggets away.  Just look through all the material and take out any rocks you don't want by hand.  Keep gently agitating the material that is in your pan.  Break up any clumps of clay you have, since gold can be trapped inside the clay and carried away from your pan.

In the creek's calm waters, tilt your pan slightly away from you.  Allow the debris and muddy water to slowly slosh out of your pan.  Keep repeating this step.  Add more water to your pan and keep the materials stirred up in your pan until the water inside your pan is pretty clear.  Remember to keep the bottom of your pan lower than its side you are tilting.  That way the gold stays in the bottom of your pan.  Sharply tapping on the pan's side every once in a while helps the gold make its way to the bottom of the pan.

After you have finished working all of the materials down so that fine sand is the only thing left in your pan, add a small amount of water and swirl the materials gently with your pan tilted slightly.  Then the gold will gather at the edges of your pan's bottom.

If you find any visible gold at this point, then you are most definitely in a good spot. Your pan will have black sand in it.  The remaining black and is called concentrates.  Remove any tiny nuggets or flakes using tweezers and place them inside a plastic vial.  When working in a creek, it is better to avoid using glass sample bottles.  If you drop your container and it breaks, you will lose all of your gold.

Put the rest of the material inside an unbreakable plastic container.  Rinse your gold pan out carefully into the concentrate container.  After the materials have had a chance to settle, you can then pour any excess water out.  Since there is always a limited amount of time for testing, most experienced prospectors end up taking the concentrates home with them and then pan them out.

If there are several areas that you are going to test, it is useful to place the concentrates from every test into separate containers.  What works really well for this is heavy duty sealable plastic freezer bags.  Mark your map with the location of every one of your tests or draw a sketch that shows the area.  Also be sure to mark your samples. Following this procedure helps you to pinpoint what the best areas are for working in if you decide to set a high banker or sluice box up to run lots of material through.

Remember to always fill your test holes back up.  Make sure the area is clean before leaving.  Have a wonderful trip and may your pan turn up golden.