8 hr lake hunt with the Xcal 2

[ronhob]

Here is the outcome of Sunday's hunt. The good and the ugly. Man I feel sorry for people that swim in the lake with no water shoes! Just asking for cut up feet. Believe me, I find a fair amount of band aids in the scoop too I found the twenty floating along the bottom about 3 ft deep. I like going in the morning when the water is calm and clear. I usually find a few site items this way.
{14D,15Q,16P,9N,1 10k gold ring, 2SS, 1 junk and a silver toe ring. + the twenty} < {Nearly 200 pcs trash-(mostly pull tabs and beaver tails).}
1 good target to 3-4 junk isn't so bad I guess.

 

[Dancer]

Ron, looks like the exzat picture of results o where I've been hunting. Fresh water party boat tie off. Man the beaver tails! Got to use a boat to get to mine. There's gotta be more gold at your site .
Just got to pick threw the mess of trash. I can only do 3 hour hunts, but get on it 2-3 times a week. Two gold rings, 3 silvers, not as much clad. That 20$ = 15 Silver rings so that's a boost.
Keep hammering it,let us know.

 

[bootyhoundpa]

Man,you really cleaned up....that is a tremendous amout of targets for one hunt... 10k and 20 spot,very good....

 

[ronhob]

It took me a little while to figure out how to load better pics. A little easier to see the hidden hazards in the trash photo.
8 hrs definitely takes it's toll on the body. I am still feeling it several days later.
I am going to go take the AT PRO out for a run at the end of august to give it a full day as well. I took 3 days of work, so I will probably need a stretcher to carry me off buy the third day of water hunting.

[/URL][/img]

[/URL][/img]

 

[wvrick]

Wow nice haul!

 

[Mark7]

Nice finds. I Like how you posed the little toy man in our trash photo.

 

[ronhob]

I went out Thursday, August 27th, with the X-Cal 2 for about 6 hrs. The first 2 pics are from that hunt. I went out again today(Friday) for another 6 hr water hunt using the AT Pro this time. The last 2 pics are from that hunt.

I must say, I have owned the AT PRO for 2-3 years now, but I never really gave it a chance in the water against the X-cal. IT HOLDS IT'S OWN IN THE FRESH WATER LAKES FOR SURE!
I tried it a few times before, but always got frustrated with all the little clicks and pops and spits it made in my areas. I was too used to the mellow threshold of the X-Cal I guess.
I used pro coin mode with the iron disc at 40 and turned the sens down 3 bars from max and WOW do the close(1-5 inch) targets bang hard. The modulated audio helps a lot when the sens. is not cranked out all the way. I also love that I can watch the TID numbers to help me decide if I want to dig or not. I dug a super lot of pull tabs and beaver tails, as you can see, but my recovery time was far quicker.
All in all, it becomes a numbers game when you are in the "dig it all" mood. Any one of those beaver tails could have been a gold ring.
The 5x8 is also much easier to find the center with my foot when pinpointing the target. I still like the Minelab gold sounds though. Wish garrett had a few more tones in there to spice it up a bit, but it does just fine as it is. The AT also separates far better in the trashiest areas.


The X-Cal got 1 gold 10k and 3 silvers along with the cross, while the AT PRO only got 1 silver, but the Pro also went to the same lake the day after the X-Cal.
107 pcs trash for the X-Cal
163pcs trash for the AT Pro

ps. The nickles are a no brainer on the Pro. 48-53 bouncing no more than 3#s most of the time. A few surprise me with numbers to 48, but generally 51 is the magic middle #

I am highly satisfied with both machines!

[/URL][/img]

[/URL][/img]

[/URL][/img]

[/URL][/img][U

 

[bootyhoundpa]

Wow,thats alot a digging there....some fine cool finds...nice to have 2 machines that compliment each other...

 

[ronhob]

Thanks bootyhoundpa. I really enjoyed using the Pro. I have one day left to hunt the lake, so now I have to decide which detector I should use. The beach area is pretty large, so there are plenty of targets left to dig. Each year the old pull tabs seem to drift in towards the beach, leaving me with an endless supply of decoys to camouflage the good stuff. On a positive note, this eliminates most of the competition in my area.

 

[ronhob]

Well, I decided to use the AT PRO.
This is everything I found in roughly 8 hrs.
Approx. 135 pcs. trash
24 Q
3N
8P
2D
1-50 cent pc
1-Silver ring
1-junk ring
1-(once upon a time) gold plated chain

I hit a few areas that were neck deep and had Old clad quarter spills. I found the 50 cent pc there as well. You can barely tell what it is with all the deposit build up on it. I would guess it has been there for many years. The water is lower than it has been in the last 5 or so years, so this exposes about another 10 ft of lake bottom the entire length of the beach. It is tough to dig the targets out that deep though. Many times, I have to work my way back to shallower water to regain my body movement and warm up the body core a bit, then return to the deep. Water was pretty cold, even with a 3 mil wet suit on!

I did, however, decide to discriminate out a few notches to eliminate the full pull tabs that I was digging so many of last time around. I still had to dig the beaver tails, but it saved me a lot of time to disc the full tabs. Nearly all my gold rings fall far below the these notched #'s anyway. Nickle and below are the really important ones I did not want to notch out. I didn't find myself any gold this time around, but now it's on to dirt hunting for me!

[/URL][/img]

[/URL][/img]