As I have said in the past, in order to improve your odds of finding that buried gold you must learn how to determine if the conditions on the beach are going to be in your favor.

The first thing to note is the current tides. You can do this several ways. I found this website that sells tide clocks. These clever little devices look like a normal clock but instead of telling you the time, they tell you the current tide. Pretty handy if I do say so myself. The web address is http://www.nauticaltideclocks.com

You can also find out the current tide at this website.  I think it has everywhere covered. http://www.saltwatertides.com/pickpred.html

After you have determined the tides, you might want to know the current weather conditions. You can find them at weather.com.

I have a few tools that I use. These can tell you things that the others can not. I like to see the current marine forecast. It can tell what the wind and wave projections are. This can be extremely valuable. http://www.weather.gov/om/marine/home.htm

Using all of these tools can improve your odds greatly.  You might even end up with some gold like this metal detecting find.

This morning the beach was devoid of any people. Only crazy people would want to go out in this weather. Now I know up north it gets cold but to us Floridians anything under 60 degrees is cold and this morning it was around 50 in the sun. Sure go ahead and laugh but I was out there in jeans and two shirts and a jacket.

The wind was blowing hard from the Northeast and every time it hit my face it stung. My eyes were watering but I was still having a blast. The conditions were perfect with the wind blowing from the Northeast and the waves were coming from the same direction. This usually makes hunting Ideal but I believe it was too soon and the waves were not quite big enough.

There were things to be found. I did find a hand full of clad and some earrings. They were all in a nice coin line.

The beach is in it’s Winter state and all of the birds are here for vacation and I mean real birds not people from up north. I happened to get down wind from a group of about one hundred birds and the air was not so pleasant. The beach was also loaded with iron.  Sometimes I will dig iron but not today, It was too cold.

I took a break from metal detecting and went over to the intercoastal. There must have been a very large school of mullet because there were so many fisherman in one small spot. I watched them fill their cast nets time after time with fish. This one guy had so many in his net that he could not pull into his boat. I watched him struggle with it for quite a while. I am going to try and start posting more pictures soon. Today you get a picture of that fisherman struggling.

I personally can not think of a better hobby to get involved in than metal detecting. It is always a surprise not matter what you find. I have found quite a few nice things but along the lines I have removed more garbage than you could imagine.

It is not all gold, silver, platinum and coins. You will find lots of trash at the beach especially if you focus your hunting in the dry or the towel line. It is all part of the game. It is an odds game after all and if you study your surroundings you can significantly increase those odds when combing the beach sands.

There are quite a few people that visit the beach often and they just do not care about throwing trash all over the place. They will leave their kids toys, shoes, old chairs and food wrappers anywhere. They really should not be allowed on the beach.

I find much more trash than gold and everyone else that metal detects anywhere does too. Do not get upset when you get a strong signal, dig it up only to find out that it is a pop top or a pull tab from a soda or a beer can. Instead just put it in your pocket or pouch and move onto the next target. If you leave it behind, chances are that you will just find it again. Take it with you and throw it in a garbage can on your way out. I have a five gallon bucket in my garage that I throw most of the trash in. I like to see how quickly it accumulates. By doing this you are increasing your odds of finding something good and you are doing a good deed by helping to keep the beach clean and the rewards from the surf gods will soon start to follow. Keep digging and have some fun because you never know, you just might end up with this in the bottom of your scoop.