Metal Detecting Cass Lake

This is a story about my most productive metal detecting spot out of dozens. It was an amazing experience for a person that was very new to the hobby.

When I returned from my detecting trip to Boyne City and Lake Charlevoix I ordered Fisher 1280x which is still my favorite water detector. I also own a CZ 20 but it is a backup. I think it is the fact that I have hundreds of hours on the bottom now with the 1280 and I know what it is telling me.

I ordered it on line so it was here within the week and I could not wait to try it out in our local lakes.

My area is full of lakes. In Oakland County alone there are over 420 natural lakes and Cass Lake is the largest. I grew up in a small resort town on the lake, Keego Harbor. It was a town of cottages and the greatest beach in the area. The beach is about a mile long and at the north end there was a private beach called White City Beach. This beach had a swimming raft for those that could afford the .50 cents that it cost to get in.

I remember in the early days of the detecting hobby I would see guys with the detectors swarming that beach, in fact they would detect the whole mile of nice sand beach. I had no idea if they were finding anything and actually thought they were wasting their time. Years later, after I got interested, I was talking to a guy at work that hunted it in the early days and he said it was just loaded with rings and silver.

This beach is long and it goes out a long way, probably a hundred yards before you are up to your chest. It is all sand with just a few small weed beds. These weed beds are at the edge of the drop and nobody ever swam out to them. No body but fishermen even knew where they were.

White City Beach is long gone now. It was torn down in the late 50’s and was just vacant until condos were built across the road and they used it.

I decided that I would just go out there and clean up, using my hookah and 1280. I doubted anyone else had been out there with one and I thought I could remember where the raft was.

I loaded up my gear and with the hookah in the back of the truck, headed for the Beach. I was pumped. Gonna come back with hands full of gold. Heck it was easy in Lake Charlevoix, it should be easy here.

I backed up to the beach area and got out and looked the area over. It was as calm as glass. I grabbed the hookah and put it in the water, hooked up the hose and put my fins, mask and detector on it.

My hookah floats in a 20 inch truck inner tube and it can take some rough water. I use it to ferry my gear to water at least waste deep. It is much easier to put on my fins and the rest of the gear out there.

I pulled the tube up on shore a little so it would not float off and started getting into my wet suit. This did not take long and soon I was wading out and pulling my hookah. As soon as I was deep enough I donned my fins and pulled on the mask. I had to unwind my sixty foot airhose by spinning the hookah around and around in the water feeding out the hose. There was very little wind but the running of the motor seems to push the hookah away from me.. I waded out to where I thought the raft once was and heck, I was only in chest deep water! I went out again as far and it got little deeper.

Even though I had grown up in the area I had never swam at White City Beach as it cost too much. We had plenty of beach anyway except there was no raft. There was a raft across the lake at Dodge Park but it was a bit far for us to walk as kid. The dang raft I remember at White City Beach was only in shallow water and I could not even locate the exact spot.

I decided to drop to the bottom and work the area in circles. It was shallow but I had plenty of weight so the hunting was easy. Easy and fruitless. I kept working the area in increasingly larger circles and found a couple modern cents but nothing else. I worked down the beach a bit and still found nothing. I was getting frustrated and was wondering if I had wasted my money. Heck the area was dun hunted out!

I hunted for a couple hours and was getting tired. I had covered a lot of beach but had little to show for it, I was disgusted. I had not been into the hobby enough to realize that this is the way it is many times.

I decided to leave and head home. As I was loading my gear I saw that it was still early and thought I would just take a quick run to Dodge Park and look over the beach. There had always been a swimming raft out there and it was in deeper water, as I remember it.

Dodge Park was built by the CCC boys during the depression and has always been in use. That is many thousands of swimmers for 70 years or more. I don’t know what was there before the park but it is a great beach. The only thing that bothered me was the fact that I had seen many people hunting the beach with detectors over the years. They were always wading but after the luck I had had at White City I was not hoping for much.

I had to park in the parking lot and carry all my gear, hookah and all about sixty yards or more. I finally got all my gear on and waded around the point and out onto the beach. There were few people swimming which I prefer. I will rarely hunt a beach area if there are swimmers there and prefer it during rainy days or early in the morning.

I dropped down to the bottom in about five ft of water and started working the sand. Man there was not much here either!! This sucks. I worked the shallow water and found a few modern coins but was thinking about heading home. Detecting sucks! 

I came up and was still in the swimming area. I was sure the old swimming raft was out deeper and looked around. I thought, what the heck and headed out a bit toward where I remembered the rafts. There are no rafts there any more and have not been for many years. Lawyers getting rich on liability from idiots getting hurt.

I dropped to the bottom and headed out a bit. The bottom was all pure sand where I had been hunting but as I worked out there seemed to be a moss covering the bottom.. I popped up again and lined up toward where I was heading and dropped to the bottom again. I was in about eight ft of water now and too deep for any waders to have hunted.\

I was laying flat with my detector swinging back and forth in my right hand. I had the shaft in full extension and all of a sudden I got a hit. That was nice. I moved up and just took my hand and scraped the moss aside and there was a merc! Dang I found a silver coin. The thing was black but I could easily see the pattern. Silver turns black in water and stays shiny when dug out of the dirt.

I thought, this is nice and gave a kick to deeper water. I got another hit. I recovered it and then another and another. I thought, “What the heck is going on here?” I raised to my knees and looked around. There had to be a reason that the coins were right here. Sure enough there was an old raft anchor. I started hunting. Now it was becoming fun! There were hits everywhere I swung the detector. I shortened the shaft up as short as I could and while was digging one hit the dang thing would go off in my ear because I had accidentally run the loop across another. The stuff was all over the place/ I found silver rings and gold rings. I have no idea how many or what I found that first day but it was so easy that I just left a good area to explore. I went to the surface and tried to get a bearing on shore so I would know where the spot was. I was quite a ways from shore now and it is easy to get lost. This was my first time there. I was to make many dives there and learned the area like the back of my hand but at that point I had to be careful.

I swam out a bit but it didn’t get much deeper. I swung my loop and got more hits and recoveries. I went a little farther and found the drop off. It was in only 11 ft of water and about a hundred yards off shore, maybe a little less, The drop fell away at about a 80 degree angle and it was black down there. I stayed shallow and swam to my left and found a weed bed. Next to the weed bed there was another anchor. I checked around it and there were hits all over the place. I looked down the drop and saw another anchor down there about fifteen feet. It looked like it had slid down from the shallower water,

These anchors are home made. They are a big slab of concrete with a metal loop poured in it for the cable. In the fall they would just untie the rope and leave the anchor. The trouble is, they are hard to find in the spring.

I have no clue how many good finds I found that day but the first few times I brought back at least sixty coins and rings. One day I brought back over 90! I had gold rings, silver rings, Silver halves, quarters and dimes. Lots of wheaties. Gold ankle chains, gold necklaces- one was 18 k 24 inch with a huge 18 k Religious medal on it. It was a beauty.

The great thing about it and I did not appreciate it at the time was the fact that I found very little trash. A few bobby pins and those buckles off old bathing suits and swimming hats but that was all.

When I came home with this bag full of stuff I honestly didn’t give it much thought because I thought everyone made finds like this. I didn’t know.

I was talking to a guy at work the next day and he told me that a friend of his was a detectorist. He worked on the first floor and my buddy took me down to meet him. His name is Jim. Jim asked me what the heck I had found and I told him I had no clue. I told him I would bring it in the next day. I did and when I showed him he was stunned. He said I had found more in one day than he did the previous year on land. I was surprised.

I made many dives at that spot over the next three years or so, taking friends occasionally and never had a bad day. I had some other days I will write about but how much of what I have found, I have no clue. I know I found over 40 silver halves on that site, Probably forty gold rings and over a hundred silver. Quarters by the hand full/ A strange thing is the fact that I NEVER found an Indian cent there in all my dives. I found bottles, a 1936 dog license, the next day in 30 ft of water where I found the license I found some dog bones.

I will have to think about it and I will write some more story’s about that spot. It is still there


The Map is Cass Lake. The red line run along the beach that I first went to. Actually White City Beach was where the two red dots are and that is all I detected. You can see how far the shallow water goes out there.

The yellow area is the Dodge Park Beach. That is where I had such good luck and didn’t even realize it at the time.