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My first post to this excellent forum. Thanks for all the useful info to-date. Hope to make myself useful. Big nuggets for everyone!

Thanks for the welcome Ernie,Eric and Wayne.

Greg

Thanks Jim for the info. I'm totally surprised to hear that dredging is allowed in BC, at all. In actual rivers/creeks? Dredging in sloughs and contained ponds isn't much fun. A weird thing happened to me in 1986. I went to the Keene store in Sacramento to buy a small dredge to take back to BC. As I handed over my cash, the salesman heard me say that I would be taking the dredge to BC. He said, "Oh no! I wish you didn't tell me that! Here's your money back. We're tired of selling equipment to you Canadians because you keep driving all the way back from the border to return the equipment. It's not our fault that your Customs officers refuse entry of dredging equipment into Canada. I'm just saving you and Keene a lot of hassle. Sorry." So, there I stood, at the counter, in stunned disbelief. No salesmen would kill his own sale with faulty information. He must have been right. Maybe things at the border and rules within BC have changed since then. It would be really weird if limited dredging was permitted in BC but importation of equipment was banned. The good news from my Keene store incident was that a local professional dredger witnessed my dilemma and offered me a diving position on his 8-inch dredge in the American River. All I can say about that is the 49-ers definitely did not get all the gold! He and his partner, before me, took out almost 1 million in the 9 month period before I arrived. In a State Park, no less. He paid $100/year for his California dredge permit which gave him unlimted access to 365 miles of rivers in the heart of the California Motherlode. He wasn't allowed to use anything larger than 8". A 12" with an 8" restrictor would have been OK, as well. I have seen the elephant, as the old timers used to say! Happy mining everybody! Lots of gold left out there!

bignug