Slow and low, especially on good sites

The Spanish silver 1711 four reale in the upper right hand corner of this photo was recovered on a Treasure Coast beach several years ago. 

The eroded Treasure Coast beach looked like a metal detecting convention on the morning I found the silver four reale. 
This Spanish treasure coin, just goes to show that you do not have to be one of the first people to search an eroded beach to find something good. 
I credit two things for being able to recover the 1711 four reale,  my search speed and large search coil. 
Obviously, traveling over two hours to get to the beach meant that I was going to be searching a cut that had already been combed over. 
The large 14 inch search coil on my metal detector gave me a chance of recovering targets out of the normal detection range of beach hunters using 10 or 11 inch search coils. 
Searching slowly insured I had a chance of detecting the deep targets I was hoping to recover.
The interesting part about this story was recovering the treasure coin only a few feet in front of the cut beach entrance. 
I assumed many people had turned on their metal detectors and hurried to search along the huge cut away from the entrance. 
Starting out very slowly, I detected the whisper signal and placed a silver treasure coin in my pocket within 10 minutes of arriving at the beach with at least a dozen other people metal detecting along the cut.
From experience, I can tell you that small things can make a big difference in beach and water hunting. 
Three of those small things that make a big difference on good beach sites have to do with the way you search. 
Cover the ground slowly, keep your search coil close to the sand to maximize depth, and set yourself apart from the competition. 
You can often have an advantage over the beach or water hunting, buy using different equipment or search techniques to the rest of the metal detecting crowd.