Return to Aliso Beach

[johnj45586]

Yesterday I received my spare lower rod and coil attachment hardware for my ACE 250 sniper coil. Apparently Garrett has changed the supply practice of the rod and there was no snap clip in the rod.

My solution to this minor setback was to remove the snap clip from the standard coil rod. Then the standard coil and sniper coil rods could be held in place by a makeshift cotter pin (I cut a chop stick at the right diameter, long enough to go through the rods and leave some for an easy handle).

Now that I had two coils and a fast easy way to interchange them I proceeded to Aliso Beach to give my search strategy a test. I have only hunted Aliso once before. That was while I was still using the Bounty Hunter VLF. The amount of iron debris from demolition of the pier made it nearly impossible to identify any valid targets. On that trip I searched nearly two hours with very little to show for it.

Today I started with the standard coil skipping through areas with too much trash and concentrating on lower trash areas. There was very little to find where the standard coil could be used.

I unhooked the cable, pulled the pin and swapped coils. This time I concentrated on the area near the sidewalk. There was a high amount of trash, both iron and melted aluminum from fire pits. But the sniper was able to pick the targets from the trash (except for melted aluminum!).

There is a stub where the pier used to be where there is a small building with the restrooms and a little walkway around it. I figured the sand below would be a good place to look for whatever might have been dropped on the walkway. I had searched this area with the standard coil with no luck.

I picked up a few random coins then the ring (shown in the attachment). This is one of the better rings I have ever found. It is in "new" condition with no scratches. Apparently it is 10KT white gold and model number K72. I don't know what the stones are. They are well mounted and the set is open at the bottom of the stones.

There is another area that now has a chain link fence around it and a green cloth covering. This area is used to park several trucks and other vehicles used for maintenance and construction. The standard coil could not get close to the fence. The sniper could get right next to it and still find valid targets. There were several coins along the fence and one really good pocket spill.

Use of the two coils allows two strategies of search based on how much metallic clutter is in the area. The standard coil allows fast movement through a lot of area, but saturates with large amounts of trash. The sniper coil requires a slow forward movement to get the overlapping sweeps. Searching in the all metal mode provides trash tones and display indications with valid target tones and display indications. The depth indicator also correlates with the tones.

Besides the beautiful ring I found 21 quarters, 15 dimes, 4 nickels and 34 pennies on a beach that previously had yielded next to nothing.

The trash and litter I dug or picked up came to about 6 pounds.

Thanks to KellycoChick and Roger in Sales for clearing up the snap clip snafu from Garrett.

A very good day indeed. My strategies for hunting proved successful and I found GOLD.

Happy hunting to all.

[EBCIII]

Congrats on the very nice looking ring! That is vert sweet!

Your clad total for the hunt was also very good. One of these days i am gonna hunt a beach, Beale.

[Kentfb]

Good clad day and a very nice ring.........

[Buster]

Nice looking ring. Good job. You know someone was upset when they lost that one... Congrats... Buster...

[JohnWPA]

Pretty ring John....way too be persistent in those trashy areas!

John

[Steve in PR]

Nice grab, John. That felt good, I'll bet!

[RingDancer]

Very nice find!!! Looks like a mother's ring....I know you were excited when you dug that out!!!...Nice job on the coil!!!

HH
RingDancer

[JCWhite]

Very good hunt and love that ring John. JC

[julieburger]

Awesome hunt John. The ring looks like what they call a mother's ring. My grandma has one and as each of your children an/or grandchildren are born you would add a birthstone to the ring. The stones are usually lab grown sapphires. If so they are good stones. Anyway it is a great find and Congrats to you.

[EPC Guy]

Agree that it is a Mother's Ring...my wife has one very similar... as was mentioned, most of the time they use synthetic stones...but still of very nice quality. Nice find - and congrats on a great hunt!