How to find small gold on tourist beaches

When you can find small gold on the beach or in the water with your metal detector, you will never have a problem finding large gold on the beach or in the water. 
Small pieces of gold jewelry add up fast, if you can detect them?

In my opinion, far too many beach and shallow water hunters look for big gold targets and miss easier to find small gold targets. 
Being consumed with metal detector depth is one of the ways you can easily miss small gold targets. 
Beach and water hunters obsessed with metal detector depth, often use extra large search coils and believe the reason they do not find gold is because gold has to be buried deeper. 
In reality, on tourist beaches they have a better chance of increasing the amount of gold they find by using a smaller search coil, I now consider my 10 and 11-inch search coils as large search coils. 
I love small search coils, and through experience I discovered the connection between small search coils and increased numbers of thin or small gold jewelry targets recovered. 
Iron or target masking is the number one reason many beach or shallow water hunters on my heavily hunted local beaches leave behind the gold jewelry I manage to recover. 
I search at a much slower pace than many other beach hunters, I sweep slower and try to cover the ground in front of me, NOT the whole beach. 
Almost all the really nice pieces of gold and platinum jewelry I have recovered, were found within the first few inches of the sand on tourist beaches.
Going small (search coil size) and finding big, really does work when you set your metal detector controls to pick up small gold.
Decreasing your metal detector Sensitivity, or Gain control may also be a better option on some beaches, the "Low beams in the fog" working better analogy. 
Searching a beach entrance from a different direction may also put a piece of gold jewelry in your pouch. 
Gold that was masked when your search coil passed over the gold target from another direction. 
Which leads perfectly into "Recovery speed", your metal detectors ability to recover after passing over a rejected target. 
This is very important when using any discrimination or iron masking feature, a slow sweep speed will insure your metal detector threshold returns faster. 
I wonder how many beach or water hunters know you are not even metal detecting until their threshold returns?