As I was packing for my family’s international move last summer, I chose to cram a few books into the front pockets of my suitcases. Call me a weirdo, but this little paperback made the cut, because I figured I might one day try my hand again at gold panning.

I’ve since made three separate attempts here with absolutely no luck at all. Thus, I finally found a reason to read The Gold Panner’s Manual! Thankfully I’ve learned a few things.

I’m not brand-spanking new to the hobby—at least as an armchair observer. I like to learn from a few gold-diggers online, people like Canadian Dan Hurd whose high-school-teacher quirkiness, humor, and excitement on YouTube will easily make your day. I always learn a thing or two from his videos or from reading posts by folks like Australian Vo-Gus Prospecting on Facebook. 

This book is the pre-internet version of a prospector’s outlet, and Canadian Garnet Basque has filled his 110-page book with plenty of helpful info for the beginning gold-panner—as well as some stuff that’s completely useless. I’ll touch on it all here.

Gold as Treasure

One of my favorite lines from the book was this intriguing thought from Chapter 2, “Some Facts about Gold”:

Gold is eternal. Gold that was mined 6,000 years ago is still with us, although, invariably, in the form of ingots, coinage, jewelry or some lost treasure trove. That very wedding band you so proudly display may once have been part of some exquisite, ancient goldwork. (28)

Alongside all of his discussions about the history of gold prospecting, Basque also shares this incredible anecdote which gets my metal-detectorist heart pumping almost as much as Roald Dahl’s “The Mildenhall Treasure”:

[The Persian King Darius III] was defeated in the battle of Issus (333 BC) and again in the battle of Gaugamela, near Arbela (331 BC), after twice underestimating Alexander’s strength. However, Darius succeeded in burying the royal treasure somewhere around Hamandan, midway between Bagdad and the Caspian Sea. Although Alexander had the countryside torn asunder and ordered hundreds killed in his attempt to location the Persian treasure…he found nothing… The Search has continues into modern times in the same general area. (10-11)

Basque also mentions that (as of 1976), only .00002 of 1% of all the gold on the Earth’s crust has been harvested by man. That’s an infinitesimal amount! I was curious to see how much of a dent we’ve made in that tiny number over the past 50 years, and this is what Grok reports:

If we take the higher estimate of discovered gold (244,000 metric tons) and compare it with the total amount of gold believed to exist in the Earth’s crust (which varies but is often cited around 400 billion kg or 400,000,000 metric tons), the portion of gold discovered would be roughly 0.06% of the total gold in the earth’s crust. (Grok, 20250124)

So absolutely, 50 years of prospecting and technological advances have made a considerable dent in the amount of gold recovered. But there’s still so much more gold out there to find—like 99.94% of it! it makes a guy antsy to try out some new techniques at the creek-side.

Gold Panning Tips

Basque also fills several chapters of this book with sage advice for the beginning gold-panner. I’ll share here just a few of my favorites.

Preparation: Before venturing into a certain region in search of gold, it is a good idea to do some research into the history of that area’s gold-bearing creeks. Did they produce flour gold, or flakes and nuggets? Did the stream produce consistently for several years, or was it merely a small, local discovery? Was it worked by the relentless Chinese? And last, but certainly not least, is it readily accessible to the modern prospector? (35-36)

Position: Once you’ve chosen am area that has a good gold-bearing history, the next thing to do is to get as far as possible from the main roads. Like fishing, the best spots are those which are least accessible, as they are less likely to have been worked over, especially by the hordes of modern prospectors who are not invading the field. Once you’ve reached a promising creek, your knowledge of gold, as outlined in this book, gives you are great advantages. (36)

Perspective: The first step upon reaching a promising creek is to proceed upstream to a high vantage point. From here you can study the area. (37)

Basque then summarizes his advice in what he calls “Six Fundamental Rules” for gold panning (38-42), though grammatically they’re more like topics than rules—so I’m going to edit them here to fit his title.

1. Gold is heavy.
   
2. Water velocity matters. “The first principle of prospecting, then, is to search where the flow of water decreases…Fine gold is usually found in the shallow areas, and coarse gold in the deeper areas.” (39)
   
3. Pay attention to obstructions — like boulders and newly fallen trees.
   
4. Focus on the shortest distance between two points. “Gold tends to take the shortest route as it is carried downstream. It therefore hugs the inside of bends and curves in its journey.” (40)
   
5. Black sand is a good indicator of possible gold — as are water-worn rocks and “cement gravel” (43-44)
   
6. Look for ancient streambeds — buried and forgotten, they may contain fully untapped hordes.

The Best Advice in the Book

I’ve dabbled with gold panning in just a few streams for several hours while out exploring nature—my wife harvesting plants for the home décor, my daughter hunting fish and crabs, and my son lounging on a boulder reading his Kindle. That being the case, I’ve only experienced strikeouts and don’t have a whole lot of confidence in the hobby, even though the family lore here is that my wife’s dad used to mine them thar hills for gold! So when I came across this set of tips, I was greatly encouraged.

Even a professional gold panner can only sift through about one cubic yard per day, so unless you are sluicing or dredging, stick to bedrock mining. You’ll save yourself a lot of wasted effort, sore muscles, and discouragement. (41)

Volume—or the lack of it—therefore, is your biggest drawback when using a gold pan. That’s why we cannot over-emphasize the fact that you should ignore sandbars while panning. Instead, concentrate your efforts upon sniping, pot-holing, or crevassing. These terms all mean basically the same thing—the careful searching and cleaning-out of bedrock cracks and irregularities. (47)

[The best use of your time is] panning down to the heavier concentrates and dumping them in a bucket [to separate later]. (52)

Curiosities

The book doesn’t allow for interaction with FAQs, so when something didn’t make sense, I just had to go with it. Basque describes sluice boxes and even provides a design for a simple DIY sluice box on pages 64-65. I’ve seen such boxes, which are generally about 3 feet long and easily transportable, and of course the guys online use simple contraptions even small than that. Makes total sense. But then I read this line from Basque and have no idea where the disconnect lies:

In short sluices, therefore, the incline should be relatively slight…It should be remembered while sluicing that, generally, about 80 percent of the gold is caught in the first 200 feet. (62)

If that’s the case, then what hope does the 3-foot sluice guy have?

Another curious thing about this book is his Chapter 7 “Dowsing for Dollars.” This is 5 full pages describing the process of “witching” for water with a willow branch or 2 chunks of rebar, a process that he claims works for 20% of the population. All it requires is confidence you’ll find what you’re looking for—because, as it turns out, the same process with work for gold if you think about gold as it does for water…if you think about water. It’s the most nonsensical thing I’ve written in a long, long while, and it makes me wonder why this book was a “#1 Best Seller” back in the ’70s.

Conclusion

This book was totally a hobby-scratcher for me. I don’t expect anyone to read this review with as much interest as I’ve written it, but I might be surprised.

The backmatter of the book also contains a wonderful glossary of terms that taught me a few things. The internet has certainly replaced the need for such a book as this, but I enjoyed it. I think I’d have appreciated the simpler times of yesteryear, backpacking into the wild with sluice in hand and no digital media to distract me, to get my hands dirty and find a new nuggets and pickers and flakes of gold. One could rarely make a career of it, but good thing! One should never make a career of a hobby, lest he lose his love, and the joy of the hunt becomes mere work.

©2025 E.T.