Searching beach parks and picnic areas

Yesterday I had a guest speaking gig at a metal detecting event in Orlando,  I had a good time and met some hardcore park and beach hunters. 
I always like to see what metal detectors other people are using and ask them why they use them. 
The majority of people on the organized hunts yesterday were using metal detectors they had used for a long time with small search coils.
Good thinking on their part because if you only have a short amount of time to recover as many targets as possible you want to use equipment you are familiar with. 
The hunt grounds yesterday reminded me of some of my favorite beach side parks and picnic areas, trashy but hiding goodies if you can pick your way through pull tabs, bottle caps and small pieces of corroding iron. 
Parks or picnic areas close to beaches are some of my favorite spots to winkle out old coins and jewelry. 
Even in Florida you can recover cool old coins and jewelry if you do your research, these silver mercury dimes came from a beach side park that has hotels across the street that were built in the 1930s and 1940s. 

Two things help to keep coins and jewelry hidden in beachside parks or picnic areas,  trash and large metal detector search coils. 
You would have to be very lucky using a 10, 11 or 12 inch search coil at these type of sites and recover good finds. 
You would greatly increase your chances of recovering good finds using a 5 or 6 inch search coil on trashy sites.
I once pulled up to a beachside park to detect and saw two people already detecting at the site,  both using 8 inch search coils. 
They moved away from the area after 30 minutes of stopping, investigating and scooping a few targets. 
I watched from a distance and moved into the area after they headed down the beach, I did not want to be seen metal detecting and possibly give the site away. 
My Minelab with iron mask had a 6 inch search coil and it was a non stop digging fest, I recovered a chunky gold wedding band near the beach shower and a small gold necklace. 
I know if it was not for the metal detector and search coil I too would have probably moved away from the area. 
Following up on a recent blog, sometimes the hardest targets to detect are shallow targets being masked by other targets.  
Trashy beach side parks are seldom searched because the masking trash targets do such a good job of hiding good targets.
Next time you see a beach side park or picnic area, think of how many people have used those areas, lost valuables and how many times you have ignored those areas walking onto the beach.