Use your gold pan, or better yet, a small shovel to scoop a good portion of riverbed into your pan. Shake and swirl to help sift gold dust, flakes, and nuggets to the bottom of the pan while all other types of debris come to the surface.
2. On a very forgiving angle, allow the current to remove the first layer of debris away. Continue this process being conservative to ensure you’re not losing gold.
3. Once you have what looks to be sand left in your pan, retrieve your tailings. This is the process where you shift the water to one side of the pan while you tap, tap, tap the other side. Gold will move to the side of the pan that’s being tapped while sand will move in the direction of the water. This naturally separates the two materials so that you can collect the gold and transfer it to a vial.
4. Tweezers or a sniffer bottle will work. If you’re especially efficient, you’ll be able to adequately separate black sand with a magnet or a special screen to then pour the gold into a vial.