Nugget Patches

[woody]

Here is some nice Gold.

[ARIZONA]

Here is some nice Gold.

  Nice bunch!  How about some more info on it?

[woody]

That Gold was found by one of our forum members, he was having trouble uploading pics so I put it up for him.

He also sent this info below.

NUGGET PATCHES
How many nuggets should there be in an alluvial patch? By the time you get to hear of a patch all the easy and probably big pieces are taken, what is left can be rewarding and a lot of fun. There are two main nugget types in patches; first the usually large smooth nuggets found as loners or with about 10 mates in a run of 50m or longer. These I call ALL or Nothing patches with a lot of hours of the latter.
The second nugget type is rough and may have inclusions of quartz or iron-stone and can be spread out in a circle or fan shape of 100m from which you always get something to go home with from a days work. The total amount of gold in the alluvial patch can only be what was in the patch when it started life underground. However when these types erode and break up they always seem to have a consistent ratio of sizes and numbers relevant to the original start patch. To illustrate this ratio I have attached a photo of a 34.8 oz patch I detected and dryblowed. Nuggets between .2g and 8g amount to 174g. The sand and gold dust size amounted to100g came from the dryblower.

[Chook]

Thanks for the help posting Woody I will get the hang of it. As a follow on to understanding nugget patches I am posting a photo of what I mean when I say smooth nuggets as loner's with friends. All nuggets are not from the same source at a given location and can come from different source rock types, which gives the nuggets a characteristic surface patten. Some rock types always produce patches with greater numbers of nuggets of smaller size as do other rock types (host rock) allow the gold to form into larger more solid nuggets. Knowing the tell tale pattern on a nugget when you find it and knowing the host rock that makes that pattern can help you enormously when in new country. Being able to find the right host rock laying around in the surface rubble zero’s you into the right area to start your search and an expectation of the type of nugget size helps you select the correct search mode and pattern for that area.