Think small gold

You could say I am more known for my big gold jewelry finds, but I never go looking for big gold. 
I concentrate on trying to find small gold, because I know if I can find small gold the big gold will be easier to find. 
If you are not finding small gold, you may be missing large pieces of gold jewelry and not know it. 
The easiest way to make sure you are not missing small gold is to take some small pieces of gold jewelry down to the beach and experiment with different metal detector control settings. 
It may surprise you just how much a few small increases to your discrimination control or using the wrong size search coil can make to your chances of recovering small gold. 
Many metal detectors have a built in iron mask and work fine without increasing the discrimination control or installing extra large search coils and magic headphones. 
If you are not finding small gold with your metal detector,  you need to find out why and make the necessary adjustments to your controls, search coil selection or metal detecting technique. 
These three pieces of small gold were found last year following two water hunters plowing through the water trying to cover as much ground as possible before I could get to it. 

A sloppy and fast beach or water hunting technique increases your chances of missing small gold. 
This raw emerald in a thin gold wire band pendant was a very nice water hunting find from last year,  recovered because I was using minimal discrimination and sweeping slow enough to detect the thin gold wire pendant.  

Again, to recover small pieces of gold jewelry you have to give your metal detector the time to detect small gold. 
Fine tuning your metal detector to hit on small gold is best done before going beach and water hunting, an hour or two experimenting with settings and search coils at the beach can pay big dividends. 
Never assume metal detector setting passed around on the internet detecting forums will work in all areas,  there are no one size fits all metal detector settings.
The best metal detector settings are the ones that help you to find small gold jewelry,  experiment and see for yourself how small gold jewelry finds lead to big gold jewelry finds.