Dilla,
There is some information on the forum, that may help a new prospector, like how to identify gold from fools' gold, and testing for gold...
We Have several prospectors and miners as members, and although our main focus, on the forum, is refining the metals, prospecting or mining for gold or other metals is not the focus of the forum.
If your goal is prospecting, I would look into other resources for information, like the history of mining in your area, historic documents of the mining and deposits along with gangue ore types associated maps new and old, information on the geology in the area, mining equipment, and tools and how they are used, and most important is to where to get a cure for gold fever until he can overcome that disease of the prospector he will struggle.
The best tool is a pan, and some hand tools to dig, break and crush rock, tools to get into crevices, buckets, and screens (classifiers), and maybe a few items like a snuffer bottle.
Learning How to pan for heavier materials, fill a pie pan, ford hub cap, or gold pan, with sand gravel, and rocks, and add say 3 pieces of lead smaller than a BB's or down to as small as fly poop.
Fill a large tub with water (this is a water source like the river, you will fill your gold pan containing gravel, from this tub, and dump the water with a portion of the sand and lighter gravel back into this large tub ( which anything you remove from the gold pan will be in the large tub.
The trick is to get the material moving in the water, shaking, and vigorously agitating the pan from side to side will get the materials into suspension, now tilting your pan forward till some water runs over the edge giving the pan a couple of side-to-side shakes, getting the heaviest material into the bottom corner of the pan, now dump half of the materials (water-rock sand) out of the pan and into the large tub. repeat until all is left in your pan is the lead count them, if you lost one you will lose gold, if you have all your lead you will have gold with it if there was any in the materials you panned.
Is it gold? It is yellow like gold.
Smash it with a hammer, does it crush if so it is not gold, gold is soft and will deform or flatten.
Is this rock gold? scratch the golden-colored specimen on unglazed ceramic (bottom of your coffee cup) if the streak is black or red streak this indicates an iron ore (fools gold) hematite, or magnetite (similar to the heavy black sands that try and stay in a pan with your gold), if the streak is gold, and it is malleable, you have gold.
If you can see it in the gold pan glittering a golden color, with a pan full of sand or gravel, it is not gold, gold is heavy and will be at the bottom under all your sand and gravel, you will not see it till the last sand and gravel has been panned off, gold does not float in water when the sand or gravels won't move by the same action gold is about 3 times or heavier than the rocks and sands.
Gold will normally be deep under the sand and gravel and rocks of a creek or river, all the way to bedrock, and normally found in its cracks.
Prospecting, panning for gold along a creek, the goal is to find where it is and is not along the course of the creek, as you move up the creek check bedrock cracks and the creek gravel beds (check on inside bends of the creek) or downstream side of and under boulders or in deep pockets...
You may find as you went up the stream the gold gets better but further up it is getting harder to find, you passed the source, move back down now check the hillside of the stream, or spring coming down the mountain, following the gold to its source. the further the gold is from its source, the more it looks rolled or worn rounded or flattened, the closer to the source normally the gold will have sharper edges, or the more it can look like wires or stings, the less deformed or flakes or nugget-like it will look.
Welcome to the forum.
