seriousdetecting.comAnswer
Apr 22, 2026 - 03:56 PM
Both, ideally - they are complementary rather than competing approaches. A gold detector like the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 covers large areas quickly and locates nugget-bearing ground and patches that would take much longer to identify through panning. Once you have located productive ground, panning and sluicing recovers the fine gold in the creek material that is too small for any detector to pick up. The most productive prospectors combine detection to locate the area with panning and sluicing to work it thoroughly.
