Thursday, December 27, 2012

Itching to prospect and a blog post


   I hope everyone had a good holiday. Mine was just swell except for the blizzard. This is kind of an odd week for the PaystreakTV blog. Jungle gold is over and this weeks episode of Gold rush Alaska looks to be one of those behind the scenes special shows.  I guess it's cool if you like to see that kind of stuff. I am just being honest when I tell you I am not one of those people. I don't really care how they record the show I am just happy they do. Hopefully they get back to business next week so I will have something to review.  On a brighter note the winter solstice (aka doomsday) was December 21 and the earth did not blow up or get hit or get galacticly  aligned with a black hole. The jury is still out on the polar shift but if it does happen I am kind of hoping Ohio will get a little closer to the equator. At least now we can start to see the sun a bit longer each day . I can't wait for spring. I don't know about you all but I am ready to prospect.
   Knox and Naz are my gold guarding dogs. I can't figure out why but when they get out in the snow they never want to come back inside. I think they would be content to stay out all day and guard the yard from all the neighborhood cats and rogue ninja birds. I wish I could leave them out but the problem is when I say they guard the yard what I really mean is they can bark for hours. I try to be considerate of the neighbors.


Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Gold rush Alaska 12/14/2012 review and thoughts. Updated gold tally


I am sorry for not posting my review this last weekend. With the tragedy in Connecticut still stinging in my brain I didn't feel much like writing. I focused on my family instead. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families who lost their loved ones. I have nothing else to say about this except, if you haven't already, hug your kids.

   I am going to start this weeks review at the Big nugget mine. Parker Schnabel finished his new access road to Smith creek. After running a bit of material he came up empty. Parker got some advice from Tony Beets. Tony is a well known and knowledgeable miner and a big supporter of the drill first mine later method. He told Parker to drill and that's what he did.  Now I was under the impression that Parker worked all winter getting Smith creek cut down to gravel. My impression was incorrect much to my dismay and much to Parker's dismay his first test hole went to like eighty feet before he hit bedrock. Not sure what he is going to do now. I would like to see a few more holes drilled before throwing the towel in on Smith creek. I guess we will wait and see but this is some rotten luck.

   Across the river at Porcupine creek the Dakota boys are in the glory hole again and it's still producing gold. They should really send Jack Hoffman a fruit basket or something as a thank you for digging it so deep for them in season 1. Fred found a hole within the glory hole. He tested the gravel and found a lot of color in it. With the test dirt looking good the Hurt's went to town. They ended up pulling out 18.7 ounces of gold when they cleaned up. That's around thirty grand if you turn the gold into green so no more nickle and dime stuff for them I hope.

   Last but not least the Hoffman crews. Todd's turbo trommel is turning out to be just a regular old trommel and it doesn't run very well. I don't know why they even call it a turbo. I can run dirt faster with my mini sluice. He tried half speed but the motor is still undersized so it still overheats. Todd had to shut it down by the end of the show and have team Turrin wipe his butt for him again. After two big weeks Indian river was in tweak mode. Adjusting, modifying, and doing maintenance so needless to say they were not running at the time. With Todd failing to produce any gold Indian river had to buck up, get their wash plant back online and get the last seven ounces. They pulled it off and then some with clean up weighing in at 21 ounces. All I have to say is it's a good thing Dave Turrin didn't fall for that turbo trommel trick in the beginning of the season. What do you think about the show or gold prospecting in general? Comments are always welcome below. If you like reading my blog pass it on and don't forget to subscribe or follow. Thanks for the visit.


Gold rush Alaska gold tally


Hoffman Indian river
115 oz= $185,000

The Big Nugget
80 oz =$131,150

Dakota Boys
27 oz =$42,571
     

 

 

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

PaystreakTV season 2 gold prospecting finale

I am sad to say that PaystreakTV season 2 is over. The cold wet Ohio winter has begun. I put together a montage of some of my favorite times over the last two seasons. I wish to thank all the viewers for viewing and all the subscribers for subscribing. You all have been great and I had a lot of fun doing the show. Watch for season 3 this spring on Youtube. We are in desperate need of some equipment repair and some rest. After that I think I want to figure out and build some kind of a dredge. Maybe I will do that in my shop and record some videos to get us all through the next 4 months. Anyways here is my PaystreakTV season 2 finale. Enjoy! Special thanks to www.soundjay.com for the royalty free music! >

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Jungle gold 12/7/2012 review and thoughts

   This was the season finale for "Jungle gold". In my opinion it didn't come quick enough.  It is no suprise that George and Scott failed and went home even further in debt. What I don't know is how much of this show was just scripted drama. I suspect a lot of it but who knows what Discovery channel was thinking with this show.  If you watched this week you got to see the guys do a large back road gold deal in a last stitch effort to save the season. You also got to see them road blocked and robbed of said gold. The stupidity, if it's real is just mind boggling. Why in the world are they doing something like this without a gun and why are they stopping for a road block? If that was me I would be in four wheel drive and going through them. Here is another safety tip. If you are in a third world country with a $70,000 dollar gold bar in your truck DON'T STOP THE VEHICLE!  I am happy Jungle gold is over. I don't know how much more I could take. George said they were coming back so investors beware. I only hope that there is not a season 2 in the works. What's your opinion on Jungle gold? Comments are welcome below. Don't forget to follow or subscribe and thanks for visiting my blog.  

Gold rush Alaska 12/7/2012 review and thoughts

   I decided that I needed to get my reviews for the gold shows up quicker so I was up late last night watching them on my DVR and getting my notes together. Having done all of that here we go with my review and thoughts for the 12/7/2012 episode of "Gold rush Alaska". We will start this week with the Big Nugget. Parker pretty much finished his road to Smith creek. He only ran into one problem. That problem was a rocky outcrop right in the path of the road. He got some help from his dad and brother who have some experience with blasting. It is always cool to see big hunks of rock getting blown up with dynamite. It looks like Parker got everything worked out. Hopefully he will be mining for next weeks episode.

   Across the river at the Porcupine creek claim the Dakota boys have finally decided to drain the glory hole. The material they had been running was producing small amounts of gold but Dustin convinced his dad that they were running out of time. They had just got their pump running when disaster nearly struck. MSHA decided to do a supprise visit.  I understand that regulators like MSHA do an important job keeping people safe in a potentially dangerous work places. They also have the stroke to shut you down if they want. I figured after last seasons experience with MSHA Fred most likely had all of his paperwork in order this time. They made out good with only one citation for a broken window in the excavator. They should be running glory hole gravel soon so I am excited to finally see that.

   We end this weeks review with the Hoffman's.  Todd has managed to get his turbo trommel installed. The initial run didn't go so well though. The crew at Quartz creek soon found the trommel to be a bit slow. Their material was building up in the drum and they started to smoke a motor. The turbo trommel creator Ray Brosseuk said he didn't like the horse power of the motor. Am I wrong in thinking that as the machine builder YOU are responsible for for sizing your motors correctly. All I have to say is Quartz creek is a disaster so it it's a good thing Indian river is saving their butts. Indian river is the only claim to show some gold this time. Dave Turrin and co pulled out a whopping 63.4 ounces of gold out of the ground. Add that to the 30 they got last week and they are only 7 ounces away from the investor requirement. That's a bit over $100,000 in their last clean out. Nice job Indian river. Well that's all I got. Comments are welcome below. Don't forget to follow or subscribe and thanks for reading my blog.

Gold rush Alaska gold tally


Hoffman Indian river
94.27 oz= $151,500

The Big Nugget
80 oz =$131,150

Dakota Boys
8.6 oz =$12,571

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Jungle gold 11/30/2012 review and thoughts

   Here is my review and thoughts about last weeks episode of jungle gold. Scott Lomu and George Wright are officially a train wreck in the jungle. If such a thing is possible. They are spending their investors forty grand right now and all they have to show for it are two rock crushers and a couple of grams of gold. Adding to the drama the boys have been basically pushed out at the ramosa claim by Singh and Chandler inc. They even sent Scott and George a bill which I thought was pretty funny. On top of that they are holding their equipment hostage until the bill is paid.  My suggestion would be to take their rock crushers and hook up with their original trommel go find a gold spot and mine. The last of their money will run out quick so they need to quit screwing around and get on some gold. The lack of direction is astounding with these guys. Do they want to crush rocks? Do they want to trommel dirt? They need to make a decision and get it done because I don't know about you but I have had just about enough of this show.  I guess we wait to see what happens in the next episode. Thanks for reading. Comments are encouraged below. Don't forget to follow or subscribe.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Gold rush Alaska 11/30/2012 review and thoughts

   This weeks episode of Gold rush Alaska was pretty freaking good. Everyone found gold and the drama was kept to a minimum. I am starting with the Dakota boys this time. I am glad that once again Dustin had to eat humble pie made of crap dirt. Fred was right on this one. If your going to move the dirt anyhow you might as well see what's in it. While we are on the Hurts there is another blog I read now and then that said the cabin that the Hurts destroyed to get at the "crap dirt" was actually kind of a historical building.  Click the following link to read about it.http://hainesalaskatourguide.blogspot.com/.  It is a shame how quick we are to knock stuff down with out finding out about the history first. Bad karma is coming for the Dakota boys. On the bright side they did get 7.1 ounces out of that "crap dirt".

  Up north in the Klondike Todd has finally taken possession of his turbo trommel. It is not installed and running yet but it is there and that's a big deal. I am curious as all heck to see that thing run. It's time to make fun of Dave Turrin now. Last week was pretty much a bust for Indian river. We all can agree that he was not deep enough yet. This week he gave it another shot digging another 2 or so feet. They ran all that material but at cleanout time their mining expert was away on business. Here comes some drama. Watching these guys stand there scratching their heads and try to figure out how to finish cleaning out their sluice box dumbfounded me. This is season 3 right? How many years does it take to learn this?  They must have figured it out because at the end they had 30 ounces of gold. So finally some significant gold from Indian river. Nice to see that.

   Back down south at Porcupine creek Parker is finishing up the Emerson trench paystreak he leased from Earl Foster. His plan is to get 50 ounces in a week and take that money to build a new access road to Smith creek. He ran his wash plant harder than it has ever been run before. He did manage to blow out a bearing but I can say from experience those are easy to fix. At the end of the week Parker Schnabel is the man- kid with a cool 55 ounce clean up. Nice job Parker and crew. Hurry up and get back to Smith creek now. Thanks for reading and don't forget to follow or subscribe if you enjoy my blog.


Gold rush Alaska gold tally

The Big Nugget
80 oz =$131,150


Hoffman Indian river
30.86 oz= $51,500


Dakota Boys
8.6 oz =$12,571


Sunday, December 2, 2012

My gold from the last time out prospecting.

  Here is the gold I found the last time I got out prospecting. I only had about 5 hours that day but I did get to hook up with prospector Gary one last time for the season. Nothing real big but it's gold. 






 


The picture to the right is all of my operation. I try to  travel as light as possible. Fewer trips to the truck.


Jungle gold 11/23/2012 review and thoughts

   I am in the same predicament a lot of you are in right now. Jungle gold makes me want to scream at the tv like I do for a bad football game. But it is a show about gold and if you are a prospector you are almost compelled to watch. This week I am not going to blog a lot about the show drama because I hate it. They lost their main investor but managed a cash influx from another one who was willing to risk a bit more. The ramosa claim still is not producing and its day to day operations been taken over by Singh and Chandler inc. I hope I spelled his name right. Scott and George cashed out the minimal amount of gold they had paid some bills and started sneaking around looking for yet another claim to run this time with out Singh and Chandler inc. At the end of the show this week with Scott in the states trying to find money George was prospecting a new spot. They dug the deepest test hole I have ever seen and still did not reach gravel. Over on the open side of the pit some villagers had set up camp and were mining. George did not go incredible hulk this time. Instead he went down and watched them. With their wooden sluice boards and a half a dozen people they pulled more gold out in six hours than George and Scott could get all day running a trommel. I think after seeing that I would have hired me a bunch of the villagers to mine for me. The Jungle gold guys are so far in the red I see no point in doing a gold tally for them. So we will end the post here. Thanks for reading. I know it is painful. Don't forget to subscribe and or follow my blog. As always comments are encouraged and welcome.

Gold rush Alaska 11/23/2012 review and thoughts

   Real quick I have some PaystreakTV news I need to get out of the way.  I am sad to say that my season 2 of PaystreakTV has pretty much ended. I am in the process of editing a special moment montage video for a finale. That will be uploaded this week so watch for it on my Bliptv and Youtube channels. I will probably post it here as well. Season 3 of PaystreakTV will start when spring returns to Ohio. Thanks for all the support every one and for watching my show. I had almost 17000 views in five months so I couldn't be happier.

   Now for the review and thoughts for Gold rush Alaska episode 11/23/2012. I know I am a week behind but to be honest I record the gold shows on my DRV and it takes me a week to watch and re-watch them and then decide what I want to say about them. The reason I take my time is simple. I don't want to post a bunch of garbage. I want to post entertaining original gold content. That being said we will start with The Big Nugget this week. Parker is building bridges so no gold for him this week. He did manage to get it finished even with the squabbles within his crew. I am so tired of the drama and I hope Parker gets back to business next week.

   Todd Hoffman had just returned from Canada. He was getting his turbo trommel back on schedule. It looks like it is finally going to get on the truck. Okay here we go again with more drama. The investors rep showed up with an ultimatum. The mines need to produce 100 ounces in the next month or they pull the plug. To add to the drama Indian river with the only running wash plant had its first clean out and it was less than an ounce. I am not sure if Dave Turrin's wash plant isn't tuned right or if the top layers of pay gravel are just lighter colored and the bigger stuff is deeper. I guess we hope to find out in this next episode.

   The Dakota boys had a mechanical problem with their excavator. A tensioner bracket for the track busted all to heck. I was pretty impressed with Fred Hurts metal fabrication skills. To build from scratch a part you need out in the middle of nowhere is something else so nice job Fred. I think your son was suprised too.
The dirt they have been moving is top layer stuff from the other side of the Porcupine creek claim. Dustin was crying a bit because he thought it was crap dirt and they were wasting time. He ate humble pie later when the cleanup was 1.5 ounces. Yes Dustin you are the construction worker your dad is the miner.

    I need to take some Tylenol and get ready to do the Jungle gold review so in the meantime don't forget to follow or subscribe to my blog. I love reading your comments so feel free to tell us what you think. Just keep things on topic and PG-13.


Gold rush Alaska gold tally

The Big Nugget
25 oz =$43,150

Dakota Boys
1.5 oz =$2571.00

Hoffman Indian river
.89 oz= about $1500

Monday, November 26, 2012

Jungle gold 11/16/2012 review and thoughts

   Well you've got to hand it to Scott and George. They are consistent. They move a whole lot of dirt for an embarrassingly small amount of gold.  Things are not going well for these guys just as we predicted early on in these posts. Their claim is not producing anything worth digging and their equipment is failing. Their mechanic got sent home to save some money. He was the wrong kind of mechanic anyhow. They need to find a good bush mechanic to even have a chance out there in the jungle. Gear heads from the United states like the one George and Scott brought in are used to finding the stuff they need on Ebay and what not. I know this because I am one of those gear heads. The culture shock is to great. Speaking of culture shock. If you watched this episode you got to see the village witch doctor sacrifice a goat or something to help George and Scott with their bad ju ju. I hate to say it but they should have probably used something bigger because their luck isn't changing.  This is going to be a short post as I have found that watching Jungle gold and then blogging about it makes my head hurt.

  Thanks for reading. The Thanksgiving weekend gold show reviews coming soon. Don't forget to subscribe or follow my blog.

Gold rush Alaska 11/16/2012 review and thoughts

   They called this episode of Gold rush Alaska the battle of the bridge. It is my opinion that in order to keep things interesting they introduce drama into the show weekly. Now I understand what Discovery channel is trying to do but to be honest I don't want to see made up reality television. The drama I am interested in is created when these guys try to dodge the many pit falls of mining and then getting to see the gold at the end.Moving on then. I don't have a whole lot to say about the Parker Schnabel Dakota Fred bridge fight. Parker needs money for payroll. He had a contract to replace the bridge to Porcupine creek for X amount of dollars. Fred is lucky Parkers dad made his son give them access. All I know is neither of them were running paydirt so I am not interested in Dustin and Parkers spat or Fred playing with his knife. Give me a break.

   The Hoffman drama continues as well. Dave Turrin and crew are muscling through their first cut but one of the bulldozers went down so they had to put on the night shift to finish it. Not much more to say about Indian river. looks like they will be mining next week. Todd on the other hand is still dead in the water. He went east into Canada to where his turbo trommel is being built to try to hurry things along. Todd should have made this trip weeks ago but I don't think it would have made a difference. He did bring one of his mechanics to help so that was a little smart I guess. I know from personal experience as a maintenance man at my own shop that when you have a machine built from scratch it ALWAYS takes longer than projected. An eight week lead time on a machine that size is ridiculously short. I'm not sure it can even be done. So that's it. No gold. A lot of useless drama. Hope the next episode is better than this one.

Here is the gold tally from last week with nothing new to add. Sigh....

The Big Nugget 25 oz =$43,150


  What do you think? Comments are welcome below. Please subscribe/follow and feel free to pass along my PaystreakTV gold blog link http://paystreaktv.blogspot.com/  to any one who enjoys this kind of stuff. Thanks for reading.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Gold rush Alaska 11/9/2012 review and thoughts

   I am finding that keeping up with the blog is a lot harder than I anticipated. Hats off to bloggers who do this for a living. I am a bit behind on my "Gold rush Alaska" reviews. With winter looming here in Ohio my PaystreakTV youtube channel will be tapering off giving me the extra time I need to do things here. I am going to prospect this weekend. It's supposed to be nice but that can change pretty quick here. This very well could be the last time I get out for the season. I am kind of bummed about that. Hurry up spring!

   Enough of that. I had plenty of time to think about my review for the last Gold rush Alaska which aired 11/9/2012 so here's my take. The Hoffmans have solved all of their land issues with the help of Greg Mcneil, the land owner at quartz creek. Dave Turrin got his was plant up and running on Indian river. They had to weld a few spots up to fix some vibration problems but other than that it looks like a real honey. The quartz creek claim is having some problems now. Todd is still waiting for his "turbo trommel" which is still weeks out. Then they found a bit of gold in the tailings. Todd shut the operation down and proceeded to rip out old blue. I have two issues with this. First. An inefficient wash plant still finds more gold than NO wash plant. Second. Don't these guys have the mining expert of their payroll? I would think you would have him at least look at the plant before throwing in the towel and dragging it out of there. Todd Hoffman you amaze me every week.

   Over at Porcupine creek the Dakota boys are getting started. Fred bought another loader and brought in some help. Well sort of. He hired a woman and a guy. The guy as it turned out had a back injury that he was taking pain killers for. He was fired soon after that came to light. We will talk about the woman operator later on as we get to know her better. Not much dirt moving going on but the Hurts did get their de-rocker working. We will see what happens to them next week.

   At the Big nugget mine Parker is mining! He hit a speed bump with some trust issues. He suspects some gold came up missing.  It's a hard pill to swallow when you realize for the first time in your life that dishonest people are everywhere and you have to be aware of them. I bet he does not leave any more pans of gold laying around. Parker had an awesome clean out after his first week of running the upgraded wash plant. I was very happy for him. I like that kid. What do you think? Comments are welcome below. Don't forget to follow or subscribe.Thanks for reading. Only one gold tally so far so here it is..

The Big Nugget 25 oz =$43,150








  Real quick while I'm blogging. Here is a picture of my prospectors coat rack. I would like to think the guy up on the hill is wishing he had one. In reality he is probably wondering if I lost my mind.
 



  

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Jungle gold reviews and thoughts 11/2/2012, 11/9/2012

I decided to smash my reviews of the last two episodes of Jungle gold into this one post. you have to believe me when I say that blogging about this show is almost as painful as watching it. That being said here we go.
On the 11/2/2012 episode Scott and George go to see if they can get their trommel. Guess what. It's surrounded by water. They drop the last of their investors money on a new one. I posed the question in the last Jungle gold review. If your in a country that has a rainy season. Why are you mining during it? This episode just proved my point. Moving on now. It seems that the land owner of the claim they are on now did not let everyone in their family know about the land deal he had struck with Scott and George. A domestic dispute with the machete wielding brother in law comes soon after. Now I can understand wanting to protect your security guy but putting the skinny native dude into the death crippler flying chicken wing hold was probably not the best decision. Important safety tip coming up........DON"T MAKE ENEMIES IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY. They did do one thing right though. They got a maintenance man out there. Now if they where smart they would have had one there from the get go but whatever.

Now for the 11/9/2012 episode. It's really more of the same. The investor is getting impatient,they are having logistics and mechanical problems and to top it off they have to sleep in the Jungle now to protect their equipment because off all the friends they have made in Ghana so far. They ran a bit of dirt now and got like five grams or something like that. That struck me as funny. If they wanted those kind of clean outs they could have just come here to Ohio to mine. The other thing I wanted to touch on in this episode was the logistics problems. They have to haul all of their fuel in to their claim. To do that they have to trespass on a Chinese claim a little bit. Now that's all good but you can't turn around and beat your chest like a gorilla when they wander on to yours. Those Chinese miners were sending a pretty clear message as far as I am concerned and Scott and George need to start paying attention before they get killed out there.  My suggestion to them........Make friends with your Chinese neighbors and do it quick.  Okay that's all I can stand. Comments are appreciated below. Don't forget to follow or subscribe. The Gold rush Alaska 11/9/2012 episode review is coming soon. Thanks for reading

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

My gold from recent prospecting


 Hurricane Sandy put a literal damper on my gold prospecting escapades over the last week. I do however have some pics of the gold I found right before it blew through. Sorry about the focus. Ohio gold is very small and my camera has a hard time focusing on it.

Gold rush Alaska review 11/2/2012 The wrong claim

   So it looks like the miners are ready. Their equipment runs and they are all good to go but it looks like the Hoffman crew at quartz creek are the only ones moving dirt. The Indian river claim is having some issues right now though. Right off the bat Dave and Todd noticed drill hole markers. I know that it is easy to pick things apart sitting in my comfy office in Ohio but I am thinking that I definitely would have gotten the claim owner Greg Mcneil on the phone to figure that out. Instead they decide to pay a lot of money to drill their test holes and figure out the other stuff later. That came back to bite them when they found out that they were drilling on the wrong claim. Dave Turrin most likely entered the gps coordinates wrong. Todd said he didn't want to look like idiots this year. Sorry Todd there is always next season though. On the bright side, at least you didn't start mining it. New test holes on the right claim yielded lack luster results so they are in a pickle now. I don't know why they didn't show what was happening at Quartz creek this episode but oh well.

   Down at Porcupine creek there are flooding problems for both Parker Schnable and the Dakota boys. Parker worked all winter getting Smith creek dug down and now that the years record snow is melting  it is making access to Smith creek dangerous. I am glad he listened to his grandpa about this when he voiced his concern. It was a valuable life lesson. Lucky for Parker he has good neighbors. Earl Foster is one of them. He owns some claims right next to the Big Nugget and he agreed to lease one to Parker. Now at least he can run dirt until Smith creek dries out a bit.

   The Dakota boys are not faring as well. Could it be karma from the electrical panel thing? Fred went on a helicopter ride with a geo survey dude. After seeing the snow pack up the valley he realized that they can't drain the glory hole with out risking the whole operation and their lives. They are going to try to get at it from the other end for now so we will see how that works out for them. I want to see what's at the bottom more than ever now. What is your take on the show? Feel free to comment below. If you enjoy my blog please subscribe,follow or back link to me. Thanks for reading.


Monday, November 5, 2012

Jungle gold review 10/26/12 episode

  Jungle gold is about two guys from Utah. George Wright and Scott Lomu used to make a living in the housing market. When the bottom dropped out they where out of work. Now they are in Ghana Africa during a modern day gold rush and making a show about it. From what I have seen so far they are going to have a rough time. First off I have to say this. You are in a country that has a rainy season. Why would you mine during the rainy season? Duh.. I don't get it and that just seems really stupid to me. Flooding will be an ongoing problem for them. Another serious problem they had right away was with their claim.  They had paid to lease a claim and arrived to find armed Chinese miners all over it. When they went to the village chief to complain they got a "there's nothing we can do".  They managed to get another claim lined up and got their excavator to the only high ground on it. After all that the wives are needing money so George and Scott do a back alley gold deal. This seems really dangerous. Large amounts of money are involved. There is always a chance you will get robbed or worse. Ghana is indeed in the middle of a modern day gold rush but it's a third world country so there is a bit of lawlessness going on. Anyhow they buy low and sell high and make just under a grand. To tell you the truth I'd like to see a show about the back alley gold deals. It is to early to tell whether or not I like the show but I will say the first episode was a bit painful to watch. What's your opinion on the Jungle gold show? Comments are welcome. Thanks for reading. don't forget to follow or subscribe.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Gold rush Alaska season 3. Million dollar season review 10/26/2012

  We are back to blog our brains out about the gold shows. The first episode of "Gold rush Alaska" season 3 is in the books so here is my review and my thoughts on it. I guess we will start with the Hoffman operation since they are the biggest. They actually got to their claim early this year which amazed me for a second. That was a short lived amazement however due to the fact that the "Turbo trommel" Todd was having built was behind schedule and still two weeks out. They did have the back up this time. Jim Thurber breathed life into old blue. The gremlin filled wash plant from last season. Someone correct me if I am wrong but I think the rookie who took the high pressure hose ride was Logan Pierce. Being a maintenance man at a machine shop I know for a fact that flipping hoses hurt but they are funny as well. I am sorry to say that I was laughing.

   The Dakota boys showed up at Porcupine creek to find themselves buried in snow. Fred asks for help from the Big nugget and young Parker Schnabel goes above and beyond plowing their drive and helping jump start their equipment. I'm curious to find out what is at the bottom of Jack's glory hole so we will have to keep watching to find out I guess.

   The big nugget mine got a face lift this season or should we call it a trommel lift. Parker replaced all of his supports and re-leveled his wash plant. He also installed longer sluice boxes and upgraded the power. This should triple the amount of dirt they can process. I hope he can get it dialed in. I know from experience at my shop when you modify equipment new bugs always show up. I wish him luck with that.

   There is no gold tally yet but the Hoffman crew is on the board with what I am guessing to be few grams. It is hard to tell when it's laying in the pan. Feel free to comment below and don't forget to follow or subscribe to my feed. Thanks for reading. See you next time. 

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Gold rush Alaska do or die episode review

  You will have to excuse my tardiness on the reviews. I had a lot of gold shows to watch on my DVR. So I think we will start off with the "Gold rush Alaska" do or die episode. They showed some of the off season action as all of the miners get ready for season 3. Back this year are the Hoffman crew, Young Parker Schnable, Dakota Fred and his son Dustin.

  The drama at the Hoffmans operation this year involves Dave Turin going to mine a second hoffman claim his way for a change. He's going with a shaker wash plant with big sluice boxes. Todd has been sold on an untested turbo trommel  with a wee small 18 inch sluice. Dave was against it. I agree with Dave on that one. Kind of a no brainer. To mine the two claims this year there is some new people starting for the Hoffman crew. Some family members. Some gear heads and electrical guys. We will talk more about the new guys later on after we know more about them.

   Parker worked the Big nugget mine through the winter. He has been digging the Smith creek area of his grandfathers claim to get close to pay dirt. His test pans are not looking spectacular however. I hope he gets it worked out.

   Finally the Dakota boys Fred and Dustin Hurt. They all most did not do the show this year. Fred did not like being portrayed as the evil claim jumper last season. In Fred's defense I have to say he is just doing business. That's all.  If the Hoffmans were doing their business correctly they would have paid their lease on time and they would not have lost Porcupine creek. Fred saw an opportunity and he jumped on it. I bet most of us would do the same if we were in his shoes.

   Ok so that's the warm up. Check back, follow or subscribe because I will have my take on the first episode of "Gold rush Alaska season 3" posted soon. I will also be reviewing the new show "Jungle gold" as well. That one is crazy.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Testing my shop built mini sluice. Finding gold

Fall is starting to put a damper on my prospecting escapades. I can no longer get on the river after work as the sun is setting to early. At least I still have my weekends to prospect for gold and make videos so I am thankful for that. In my last post I showed the mini sluice being built. It was time to test it. The weekend after the build we managed to get to the river. We had to leave half way through the day to go to a peewee football game but I made it back after. The mini sluice ran surprisingly well considering it was made of a bunch of scrap junk we had laying around the shop. By the end of the day we had a bunch of small flakes and a very pleased prospector. Enjoy the video!

 Special thanks to http://www.soundjay.com/ for the royalty free music!
Just a quick reminder. Gold rush Alaska and Jungle gold are starting new seasons this Friday. The jungle gold show looks interesting. They say someone hits the mother load this season in Alaska. I hope it's young Parker. Anyways I will post my reviews, commentaries and tallies shortly after I get a chance to watch. I am getting excited!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

I built a mini sluice. Hope to find more gold.

The PaystreakTV blog is just full of interruptions now a days but this is a gold blog and we built a mini sluice so I had to post this by default. In my first few posts in the blog I was declaring my self an equipment challenged prospector. I also mentioned that I am the maintenance man at a small cnc shop. That being said machine shops and metal kind of go hand in hand. I had managed to gather up a nice pile of junk aluminium scrap sheets and whatnot for the sole purpose of building some kind of mini sluice. I have access to a small press brake so we used that to do all the bending. The rest fastened together with pop rivets and wing nuts. We lucked into some donated miners moss from my engineer buddy Joshua. He also helped me with the build as we had limited time. It was very much appreciated let me tell you. We worked through our break and lunch hour then a bit of time after hours but we got it done. Eventually I will try to draw up and post some basic schematics of the "frankensluice" (yes I named it allready.) Is that weird? Until then enjoy the video of the build. If you watch closely you can see what we did. Enjoy! Comments and thoughts are welcome.


 Special thanks to http://www.soundjay.com/ for the royalty free music!

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Prospecting gold and a string of bad luck

Picking up where we left off is getting difficult so I will improvise. Everything was going well. The PaystreakTV channel on Youtube was starting to grow. I was prospecting almost everyday and recording a show every time. I had even talked my wife into a family prospecting vacation at the end of June down in North Carolina. We had reserved a cabin at the Luckystrike gold and gem mine. Needless to say I was extremely excited. I had decided that the week down south would be my week long PaystreakTV season one finale. When June finally arrived it was almost like a switch got flipped. Everything that was good suddenly went bad. We will call it the "miners curse" and it landed right on my head. June first. I lost my ad server. I had been running Adsense on my Youtube channel to monetize my show. My plan was to try and use the revenue generated by my ad clicks to help pay for my gold prospecting and show making hobbies. It seemed like a good idea at the time. When I say I lost my ad server what I mean is the Google algorithms aka bots flagged my account as fishy and it got flushed. You have one chance to appeal and if you screw it up your done forever. At PaystreakTV we have raised the bar on screwing up. That being said we ended up squandering our one and only appeal in record time. Anything worth doing is worth doing fast. The following week was not much better. If you watch my series on Youtube you have seen my gold guarding dogs. I have two sixty pound mongrels running amok at my house. Great fun. To make the long story short I have bad knees. The dogs dislocated one of them as they ran through my legs to get outside. It swelled to the size of a small pumpkin and it felt worse than it looked. This was just weeks before our vacation so everything was in jeopardy. I was pretty bummed out by this time. I made a video to show my knee and let everyone know I was going to be down a bit. I limped around the house for the next few weeks using a cane trying to work the fluid out from around my knee cap. I had to wear a brace to keep everything straight. When most of the pain was gone we decided to go out for one last dig in season one. I had been going stir crazy sitting at home for the last few weeks and we needed to test the knee out anyhow.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Prospecting with Ed part 2 gold

Here is part two of this PaystreakTV episode featuring Ed from the Prospecting with Ed channel. More blogging coming soon so don't forget to subscribe.

Prospecting with Ed. Better than gold!

One of the highlights of my prospecting season on PaystreakTV was prospecting with Ed. Ed Marvin is a prospector on the western side of the state and he has a Youtube channel called Prospecting with Ed. Here is the link if you want to pay him a visit.  http://www.youtube.com/user/tdz61/featured  Anyways back to the story. When I first started these gold mining shenanigans I watched hundreds of videos on Youtube and alot of them were from Eds' channel. I learned a lot of useful tips and tricks and being the noob I was I needed all the help I could get. Ed and I were talking through our Youtube channels a bit here and there. He was a nice fellow as most prospectors are. Out of the blue one day I get an email from Ed inviting me to come down to the Swank claim as his guest the upcoming weekend. If you prospect in Ohio I imagine you have heard of the Swank claim. If you are not from here i'll fill you in. The swank claim is a GPAA (gold prospectors association of america) leased claim located in Butler Ohio. If you are a member of the GPAA you can camp and prospect the claim for free. These next two videos are from that adventure. I had a great time. Enjoy! Comments are welcome. Tell us about your gold stuff.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

New gold spot recent gold pics

gold spot bridge
flowers in gravel
Ohio gold
more Ohio gold
pan of gold
Here are some pictures that I had on my camera from the last few times I went prospecting. I have to say that summer is definitely on its way out. To soon in my book but you will have that. I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty that PaystreakTV will be out looking for gold until the winter freeze makes us stop. Comments are welcome below. Thanks for the visit. :)

Monday, October 1, 2012

I met a fellow gold prospector. We watched a canoe tip lol.

We are skipping ahead a bit with the PaystreakTV story. If you want to see the videos in between my skips you can watch them on the PaystreakTV Youtube channel or at my BlipTV. Back to the posted video. This was a fun day and I will tell you why. During the week before I was prospecting my first good gold spot there on the Tuscarawas river I kept noticing holes. Now prospectors know what prospecting holes look like. That was what I was seeing. I had been there for about a week and had not seen a soul. I figured that maybe they were old holes and went on about my business. As luck would have it on the weekend I recorded this I stumbled upon my first Ohio prospector. Prospector Gary is what we call him on the show now a days. He is an older gentleman. A scrapper, handyman and a prospector rolled into one. He's one heck of a nice fella and pretty soon we were talking like old friends. I was amazed that I had actually ran into another crazy Ohio gold hunter in my neck of the woods. At the same time I was thrilled to have some like minded company on the river. It was also a nice change to the show. Having a guest breaks up the monotony. So I met a new friend. While prospecting with said new friend we finally got a canoe tip on video for the show. I had been trying to get one all week. To top it all off I got some gold. It was a fun day. Enjoy!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Gold prospecting. Back to the story and part 2 of video

I sure was glad that I had decided to stay out this day. The new spot I had found was everything I had been looking for. Good flow. Easy access. It was just perfect. We still had to go through the motions and prospect it. I have found out during my still short prospecting career that just because a spot looks good it doesn't necessarily mean that gold is being deposited there. You still have to dig. It turned out that gold was present there and we were only five minutes away from home. So we finally had a better than average gold spot.Enjoy the video and I will see you next post.

Gold prospecting.Back to the story

Now that the reviews and pictures are up I think we will go back to the story. So we are going to fast forward a bit. I kept on recording PaystreakTV episodes while I learned how to use my plankin-snail. Yes I named my mini sluice the plankin-snail. Doesn't everyone name their sluices? Anyhow back to the story. My engineer buddy from work had invited me to a property he had access to that was right on the Tuscarawas river. It was a bit south of where I live but it wasn't to far. He had built a custom sluice box and we needed to test it so it worked out well for both of us. This two part video is from that day. In part one I was with my buddy and we had fun. We found a little gold but not a lot. My buddy had to cut out early so with a half a day still to myself I decided to keep going. I had found a spot on the same river but north of where I live. It looked good on Google earth so we decided to get a closer look. Part two of the video will be at the new spot we found that day. I will upload it shortly to finish this post.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Ohio gold from a new spot on the river.

a lot of gold flakes
I have found a new gold spot on the Tuscarawas river. It is actually closer to my house than my first spot. I have just started to prospect it and so far I am very pleased with what I am finding. I took about 50 flakes out of 15 gallons of material split up over three days. This picture is from one of my clean outs during that time. Gotta love it!

Bering sea gold:under the ice 9/21/12 review and thoughts

In the blink of an eye the season is over for the Bering sea ice dredgers. I have to say bravo. It is a great show and I for one am hooked. Now for the review and commentary. Lazy Gator. They owned it the whole season and fought hard until the end. Add a bit of good luck and there you have it. They are winning and you gotta love it. The Shamrock continued it's lack luster season. At this point Shawn Pomrenke is so far in the red it would have taken a miracle to save the season. It's okay though. He can always blame it on the new guy and with the ice melting it's time to dust off the Christine Rose anyhow. The Clark barely limped across the finish line after a dismal season. I was shocked at first that Zeke was having so many problems but then you have to remember. These guys are kind of making up the ice dredging thing as they go. It has never been really done before so we need to give them some credit. Chalk it up as a loss. Get some dowsing rods and make up for it this summer. I know what Zeke was feeling at the end only on a much smaller scale. I have dug for hours for just a couple of flakes and it gets frustrating. Gold mining is the hardest easy money there is for sure. Our next reviews will be on whatever gold show starts next. See you then. Here is the Bering sea gold:Under the ice final tally. Lazy Gator--95.95 oz = $157,501.93 Shamrock--69.45 oz = $114,002.18 The Clark--7.7 oz = $12,638.55

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Ohio gold pics from recent prospecting

gold from Ohio
gold from Ohio
gold from Ohio
gold from Ohio
I have been wanting to post these so here they are. This is the gold we have found our last few times out. If you squint real hard you can see it. Enjoy!

Bering sea gold:under the ice review 9/14/2012

My apologies for my tardiness on this weeks review. I was in Chicago for IMTS (international machine tool show) all last week. Totally work related and couldn't be avoided. I finally had a chance to watch the last episode of Bering sea gold:under the ice so here is my take on it. The Lazy gator can do no wrong in my book. The only thing that looks to be a problem for them is the fact that the whole crew is exhausted. I don't know about you all but I wouldn't be to excited if my spotters were dozing off when I was under the ice. Just saying. Gold mining is hard enough as it is. Even my small scale prospecting I do here in Ohio is not easy so I understand some of what they are going through. Just remember though they are in a different league than I am. The only way I can think of to solve the Lazy Gator's exhausted crew problem is conditioning. I think for serious gold mining you should do something similar to a football mini camp a couple of months before. Eat the right stuff and get your body into shape. It is that simple. It will translate to being able to mine longer with less pain. On to the Shamrock. So they take a guy that has never dived before. Never dredged before. In other words he has no idea what he is doing. Then Shawn gets mad when he sucks. Actually he gets mad because he is not sucking but whatever. That whole situation rests solely on Shawn's shoulders. It is my opinion that under the ice in the Bering sea is not the ideal place for on the job training. I did like how Shawn Pomrenke decided to suit up and went down to show Phil (I think that's his name)the ropes. He should have done that from the get go though. Bottom line is if you hire noobs you have to train them. Oh well live and learn. At least they are getting a bit of gold now. Last but not least the Clark. After the blow out with his crew Zeke had only Emily Riedel still by his side at the start of this episode. A mishap with the weight belt had Zeke bouncing off of the bottom of the ice which I thought was hilarious. I hope I wasn't the only one laughing at that. Steve Riedel showed back up to help and I have to say his "pushing Zeke down with a 2 x 4" idea was comical as well. It pains me to say that Steve did eventually save the day with his bag-o-rocks idea. Zeke and Steve kissed and made up afterwards and they are finally getting some gold so it's all good now. By the way Zeke. Get an extra weight belt dude. Thanks for reading. I hope you visit us again. Here is the Bering sea gold:under the ice gold tally so far. #1 Lazy Gator 48.52 oz =$78,645 #2 Shamrock 15.5 oz =$25,443 #3 The Clark 2 oz =$3283

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Bering sea gold: under the ice 9/8/2012 review and thoughts

Last post I gave my take on the first episodes of Bering sea gold:under the ice. I have proven that my blogging and reviewing abilities mirror my prospecting abilities and I have made a mistake. This will happen from time to time as I make a lot of them. In my last review I was spouting off about why they don't they put cameras down first. In this latest episode I found that they do indeed send a camera down to scope the terrain. I had missed it in the first episode somehow. Maybe I was on a snack break who knows. I am correcting it now however. My bad. Moving on now so I can get the focus off of me. How about them Lazy gators! Holy cow! They have over 40 grand in gold now and just seem unstoppable. That just goes to show you that a good team can indeed move mountains. I am interested to see what happens when they need to find a new spot though. Drama is the word of the day for the Clark. After singing praises for Zeke's decision to bring people in. I am second guessing myself. As soon as the night shift realized they were on a sand bar they should have sounded off. The Clark had forgotten that no camera was sent down on that spot. It happens get over it. Move on. What I find hard to believe is that Steve Riedel would chastise Zeke for the camera misstep. If he is so smart why didn't he call Zeke out about it before the big hole was cut. He can't seem to shut up any other time when he notices a mistake.Why was he silent this time? During that spat Steve called Zeke a "monster" and now Zeke wants an apology letter or their through. Seriously guys if you turn one of my favorite gold shows into "Real housewives of Nome" I will have to back another horse. Sticks and stones Zeke. Sticks and Stones. Last but not least the Shamrock. Shawn Pomrenke seems to have finally put his dredge on a gold spot. His only real problem is his crew now. Between the busted eardrums and the hose hugging they seem to be dropping like flies. I said last time bigger isn't always better. The bottom line is the amount of gold going in the box does not cover the fuel of that giant operation so they might as well burn hundred dollar bills. What a shame. Hope it gets better for them. What's your take on this? Comments welcome below.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Bering sea gold:under the ice. Review and thoughts.



The first two episodes of Bering Sea Gold: under the ice are in the books. I am going to review what I have seen so far and give you my take on it.  Now as a gold junkie I watch every gold show on t.v . DVR is a wonderful thing. This next comment is directed to The Discovery Channel. The disclaimer you run at the beginning and end of the show saying "this is dangerous and blah blah gobbledygook yada yada" goes in my brain and then goes right back out when I see the good old boys from the Lazy Gator pulling more gold aka money out of a hole in two days than I make in a year working  9 to 5. Just saying. With that out of the way we move to the crews that are having a rough start. The Clark...... Wow...I am in shock that Zeke has not found anything yet. Well no i'm not. I think Zeke's biggest  handicap right now is the Riedel circus he is trying to work with. Poor guy. He is one of my favorites and I hope he gets it together. He made a good decision bringing in  friends that add value to the operation. Not sure what he should do with the cirque de Riedel.  Maybe keep them around for entertainment purposes or something.  Next in the hot seat is the Shamrock with Shawn Pomrenke at the wheel. The Shamrock is a super mega dredge with bells whistles and everything else a gold miner would want or need. Heck you could live on the thing, it's that big.  Now don't get me wrong I like the Pomrenke's. The father son team is great but after watching the Christine Rose dredge just destroy the competition last summer I am kind of glad to see them struggle a bit. Bigger is not always better. Moving on. What I am struggling with is why no one is drilling a small hole first and sending a camera down to look for gold before committing to a spot. Better yet. Why aren't the summer dredgers logging gps coordinates for good gold spots to work after the ice comes in? Well you all know what they say about opinions. You should take mine with a grain of salt. It is easy to critique everything they are doing in Nome when I am sitting in a comfy office in Ohio. Here at the PaystreakTV blog we want to wish all of them luck and hope they stay safe. I will anxiously wait for the next episode to review and over think what their problems are. 
Comments? Feel free to put your 2 cents in by commenting below.


Monday, September 3, 2012

Prospecting made easy. Well almost.

After some experimentation with the snail I found that with enough current it worked well for trapping heavies. The problem was getting enough current. So I found myself back in the shop with my engineer buddy. After a few hours of brainstorming we decided to buy a 500 gph bilge pump and a 12 volt lawn and tractor battery. I spent about 35 bucks. So now I had about just under 50 bucks in my mobile mini wash plant. We welded up some legs for it and made them about 2 foot long. Poked them through the top and called it done. I had flow. I had angle. I had high hopes. Now we needed to get the power snail out in the field to see what she would do. Our maiden run was at Sippo park at the south end. We started with about a half a bucket. I ran what would have taken me an hour to pan in about 25 minutes. I was thrilled to say the least. I was worried that my angle was set to high so we lowered it down a bit and ran another half a bucket of material. After the adjustment I was catching a lot more heavies so I was a bit high. I found three small pieces of gold that day so the power snail was a success in my book. It worked exactly like we imagined it would. Have you ever been really excited about something and when you try to tell people about it they just don't get it? That is where I found myself for the next couple of weeks after this day. On a lighter note the PaystreakTV channel on Youtube was doing ok. Slow but sure wins the race as far as Youtube goes. Now I had a better show with the addition of the power snail. I still needed new gold spots but at least now I could prospect them quicker when I did find them. That's freakin awesome!

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The Snail is born. My first mini sluice.

Back to the story now. We are fast forwarding a bit. After Mohican I went and prospected Nimeshillen creek. Found nothing but I still had a good time gathering intel on that spot. It was at this time that my lack of equipment finally came to a head. I just said to myself nope can't do it anymore. I went to the local Walmart and bought a pair of knee high rubber boots. I think they were about 25 bucks. Now that the wet feet problem was solved we turned our attention to the equipment. At my shop I have access to all kinds of different doo dads and what nots. I gathered up all the empty 5 gallon buckets I could find. I kept four nice round ones and two square ones. I then took a not so nice round bucket and cut the top part off. I pushed in some 1/8 inch scrap screen I had laying around. Pop riveted it all the way around added handles and eureka we had a classifier that fits in a bucket. I had a way to get at the material. I had a way to classify the material. Now I needed a way to run the material. With a family, two dogs, a mortgage and a car payment dropping money on a sluice was out of the question. I could build one like my engineer buddy that works with me. The problem is that I am impatient at times and I wanted something right then. This is the part where my engineer buddy saves the day. He had the idea to get a flexible downspout extender. They are like an accordion you just pull it apart and the next thing you know you have a whole bunch deep V's. I bought one at Lowes for like 8 bucks. We went back to the shop and proceeded to cut the top off. You can see the end results in the video. Needless to say I was excited and pleased. I saw great potential. When I got home that night I was trying to tell the wife about it all. She was not as excited as I was. Go figure.

Friday, August 24, 2012

More gold stuff

gold from Ohio
gold from Ohio
Here is a couple more pictures I had of my Ohio gold in the vial.

New gold spot!

Thanks to Google earth and a nicely timed family gathering I was able to find another spot to prospect. It is not a close spot however. It's a good forty minutes away from where I live. As luck would have it the family gathering we had to attend was close. You can guess what happens next. We cut out early so I could prospect. What can I say? I have a great wife. I had read that there was higher concentrations of Ohio gold in the Knox county area and the river I was on is close to there. Google earth is a great tool for prospecting. I had used it to look for road access to rivers and creeks the week before. I found this spot and one other over in Canton. That one I had not prospected yet but I had plans to in the near future. I started recording and got to work. It was a typical cold Ohio spring day. I did my best to try and stay mostly dry. I needed to make some serious upgrades to my equipment. A fact that was getting more obvious every time I went looking for gold. I needed to get with my engineer buddy at my shop and do something about my stuff. During that time the PaystreakTV channel was starting to get some views and people were liking what I was doing so I was pretty stoked. The bottom line was, whether its big nuggets or small flakes people love gold. Finding flakes that day in a new spot validated what I was doing in my mind. It was a very exciting time for me.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

gold from Ohio
I am interrupting the PaystreakTV video blogging so I can post this picture. What you see there is my gold after four months of work. 42 episodes of of PaystreakTV laying in the pan. I know it looks like a lot but the flakes are really small. I could fit it all on half a dime. Sorry for the poor quality as this was a cell phone pic. The episodes that I found all of this in will be up here eventually. Ohio gold baby!

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Learning to prospect

So by this time I had figured out that the spaghetti strainer was not fast enough for me. I was an equipment challenged newbie prospector youtuber in Ohio. Needless to say I had some hurdles to jump. I have a friend who is also a wannabe prospector like myself. Luckily for me he has some equipment. I borrowed his half inch classifier and I brought my big shovel to help me as I tried to dig a five gallon bucket. I had every intention of doing a whole bucket in the episode I was recording that day. But in reality....classifying material is hard and it takes a long time. So we learned stuff that day. It was still early spring and evening sets in pretty quick. I did what I could and had some success. I got another pretty good episode out of it as well. That evening when I was in the editing room I took some time to think. I came to realize that not only did I need more equipment. I still only had one gold spot. I decided that I would look around my shop for stuff I could turn into prospecting equipment and try to Google earth for new spots on my lunch break at work. Once both of those problems were solved all I had to do is figure out where to fit prospecting and show making into my already busy life. I did find that prospecting show making time fits nicely into lawn mowing time. My grass got long as the result. Oh well. Sacrifices had to be made.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Gold fever!

Gold fever had hit epidemic proportions at my house. Much to my wife's dismay. I finally had enough flakes in my vial that you could see them and I have to admit,I stared at them for long periods of time. I had been winging it so to speak as far as my prospecting goes. My results have been good however which was kind of puzzling to me. I did most of my research online and the people finding Ohio gold were all moving a lot more material than I was for just a little more gold than I was getting just panning. Could I actually be lucky enough to live in an area where there is a higher concentration of gold. I had many questions on my mind as I drove to my only prospecting spot.I did another episode of PaystreakTV at the park. I loved the fact that I could find gold so close to home. I hated the fact that I was rooting around in the duck pond water to get it. To me that's just foul. Pun intended. Another problem in this particular creek was all the broken glass. I struggled to comprehend why in a park with a trash can every 30 yards there was so much crap in the creek. I gave a hoot and made it a goal to take anything that didn't belong with me. The duck water thing still bothered me though. I found a few more flakes and the show turned out good. After I was done in the editing room that night I started up my Google earth. I needed to find some more spots.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Lunch break prospecting

It is amazing to me how even a little piece of gold can infect you with the fever. When you get to the point where you are prospecting during lunch breaks you have it pretty bad. I had things to do that day after work and it was still early spring so it still got dark rather quickly. Bottom line. I was not going to be able to get out that evening. It just so happens that I work at a place where salary people like myself get an hour for lunch so I decided what the heck I will prospect the creek that runs behind my shop. I had wanted to prospect that creek for some time so this was my chance. It was cold and windy but that did not matter to me as I was on a mission. I was creating content for the PaystreakTV channel and at the same time satisfying my curiosity about the creek. I did as many pans as I could but we ended up with a big goose egg that day. Nothing. This was probably a good thing though. If I had found color in that spot I would not have been able to concentrate at work. I noticed that my hands were getting sore from large full pans I was working. I just stopped filling the pan all the way to make them a bit lighter but that problem needed to be solved. It is what it is. The fact of the matter is that Ohio gold is hard to find but I am hooked on prospecting and up for the challenge. My first episode of PaystreakTV was up on Youtube and now I had a second one to put up. Freakin awesome.

Friday, August 17, 2012

PaystreakTV is born!

So here begins my odd but fun story. A couple of years back I learned that you could find gold in Ohio in small amounts anywhere water flows. Most of it is in the northern and western part of the state where the glaciers pushed through like a zillion years ago. This gold has been ground up into pieces so small they are hard to see. Anyhow to make a long story short I found one of those itty bitty pieces. Gold fever starts to set in. I buy a gold pan at the local prospecting store. Yes there is a local prospecting store here go figure. I start learning how to pan by watching You tube videos but then life gets in the way. I put my hobby on the back burner for a long time. Fast forward to march 2012. My new hobby is my You tube channel. I started with a show I called stooonyvision where I filmed myself fixing things at my shop. After a few weeks of low views and no comments. I realized that nobody wants to watch me fixing stuff in a boring shop. I took a bit of time to think. And then I remembered my prospecting hobby on the back burner. On a cool April Sunday PaystreakTV was born. The name just came to me right then as I was filming so that was awesome. I hit a local park with a stream and start looking for a good place to dig all the while filming and talking. I know I looked like a crazy man running amok in the creek so it was a good thing the park was almost empty. That being said I was having the time of my life. I was comfortable on the camera and having a lot of fun creating content. I decided that the show was not going to be a "how to" prospect for gold mainly because I still really didn't know what the heck I was doing yet. It was going to be a "how I" prospect for gold show while using my gift of gab to try to keep it interesting. That day I found my second Ohio flake. The gold fever took over from there.