Prospecting knowledge rebuilt in PFA's own words.

Beginner: Gold is heavy. Start by looking for places where water or wash slows down enough for heavy material to drop.

Pro: Inside bends, bedrock cracks, clay breaks, false bottoms, riffles, low-pressure pockets, and old channel edges are stronger than random rough ground.

Beginner: Use grey hillshade as the quiet bottom layer when you want shape, ridges, gullies, flats, and old channels to stand out.

Pro: Keep LiDAR below tenure, faults, soil markers, and target pins so the landform remains readable while overlays add evidence above it.

Beginner: In New Zealand, start with listed public gold fossicking areas and panning. Do not treat any creek, reserve, or beach as open just because it looks promising.

Pro: Check NZPAM permit context, DOC access limits, land access, tool rules, active creek-bed limits, and heritage/cultural restrictions before detector work enters the plan.

Beginner: LiDAR can reveal old tracks, banks, hollows, mining remains, and drainage shapes, but it does not give you the right to enter, detect, dig, or publish target pins.

Pro: Run LiDAR clues through land permission, protected-site checks, club rules, heritage sensitivity, data licence, attribution, and finds/reporting duties before any field action.

Beginner: A higher soil result is a clue, not a guarantee. It says the area deserves attention, not that gold is sitting under the dot.

Pro: Rank soil points into simple high, mid, and watch bands, then compare them with structure, drainage, tenure, and local geology.

Beginner: A tenement boundary is not just a coloured line. It can decide whether you can walk, ask first, or avoid the ground.

Pro: Active, pending, expired, surrender, renewal, and application timing can change what is worth watching, but access still needs confirmation.

Beginner: Fault lines and geology contacts can show where the ground changed, broke, or gave fluids a path.

Pro: Prioritise intersections, bends, lithology changes, shears, and breaks that also line up with geochem, workings, or sensible drainage.

Beginner: If the detector is noisy, slow down before you blame the ground. A smooth threshold teaches more than a machine running too hot.

Pro: Sensitivity, threshold, ground balance, coil size, swing height, and EMI control should be logged against the ground type that caused the change.

Beginner: Mineral colour and rock type can point you toward interesting ground, but a rusty rock by itself is not a gold signal.

Pro: Treat quartz, ironstone, gossan caps, veining, alteration, and old workings as a pattern. The stronger clue is where several line up.

Beginner: Black sand is a sign that heavy material has collected. It does not prove gold, but it says the spot deserves a closer read.

Pro: Look for black-sand streaks where water slows, behind obstructions, along beach bands, in inside bends, and at bedrock or clay traps.

Beginner: Good ground can be hidden under soil, clay, or later wash. Flat boring ground can still be part of an old drainage story.

Pro: Prioritise buried channels, palaeo-drainage edges, clay breaks, terrace gravels, and false bottoms when LiDAR and geology support the shape.

Beginner: If the detector keeps chattering, the ground may be mineralised or the setup may be too hot for the patch.

Pro: Log hot rocks, EMI, wet soil, threshold drift, ground balance changes, and false signals against the coil and settings used.

Beginner: Where moving water slows or changes direction, heavy material can settle into a line, pocket, or low-energy corner.

Pro: Read flood lines, beach cuts, waterline shelves, gravel tails, inside bends, and back eddies as temporary sorting machines.

Beginner: A bigger coil is not always better. Tight trashy or mineralised ground often needs a steadier, easier coil first.

Pro: Match coil size and shape to cover, trash, depth goal, mineralisation, sweep space, and whether the day is scouting or cleaning up.