My First Time Detecting

One year a bunch of my diving buddies and I went on our yearly trip to the Boyne City area to do a little diving and raising hell at night in the local pubs.

One of my buddies brought along a metal detector. It was a Fisher 1280x and I thought he was nuts. I was not into detecting and didn’t figure there was squat to be found in a dang lake.

We were diving Lake Charlevoix at the old train station. There has been a beach there since the late 1800s and has been used constantly since. I think there were about eight of us on this trip and we all pretty much went our own way. I headed for the drop-off and dropped down to around fifty feet. It is all sand and the only thing worth hunting for were old bottles and anchors.

Bob Savage, the friend with the detector said he was gonna mess around in the shallow water and see what he could come up with. What a putz  Waste of time.

I was out for a while and found one old anchor and headed for shore with it. I saw Bob and asked if he had found anything and he said a few coins and a bunch of nails. I looked at them and there were only cents and rusty nails. He finally put it in the trunk of the car and we headed out again.

A few weeks later I decided to take a couple weeks off and started thinking about that detector. I looked up Bob and asked if I could borrow it to mess around with. A two week diving and raising hell vacation alone gave you plenty of time to fill. I thought it was a waste of time but what the heck, I would try it out.

My buddy Ray had been detecting for years and he talked about getting water machine but I told him he was nuts too. Of course I knew nothing about the hobby but it didn’t make sense that there would be enough on a beach to bother with.

I picked up Bobs 1280 and headed north. I decided to try out the Depot beach first. There was a diving platform out in about 12 ft of water and right on the edge of the drop off. This was not a raft but a platform on skids that they would drag out and its weight would hold it in position.

I had no clue how to even set up that dang machine so I just waded out to waste deep water, cranked up my hookah and turned the thing on, leaving the settings where they were. I dropped to the bottom and started my sweeps. I found out in a hurry that I needed more weight as I was pretty buoyant in the shallow water. I tried to use the thing for a while but got frustrated so I waded to shore and got more weight. I shoved an additional 10 lbs or so inside my wet suit and it was much better.

I started getting a few hits but most were nails and such, with a few coins thrown in. I handled the detector with my right hand and had a small diving bag around my right wrist. I used a ping pong paddle to fan my way down to the targets and it worked great.
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I stayed in about four or five ft of water and worked my way parallel to the beach. I picked up a bit of trash but a few coins too. I even found a few quarters! Hey, this was fun!

I finally decided to work my way out to the diving platform.

Now there are not many weeds in this lake, not like most Michigan lakes anyway. You could make a whole dive and not see a dang weed. This beach area was no exception either.

The beach had a gentile slope out to about 15 or 20 ft and then dropped down to about fifty feet at a slope of about 40 degrees or so. This drop is about 70 ft off shore and the platform was just shoreward from it.

I moved out that direction and started getting hit after hit. All of them were modern coinage but lots of them. I even found a few rings but I can not remember what they were. I worked that area for a long time and there never seemed to be a letup of the dang things. I cleaned up under the platform and started circling, working my way out in ever increasing circles. The hits were steady and I dropped down deeper to see what the heck was down there. More coins!

I found a total of 20 dollars and fifty cents on my first dive. I was down a few hours but once I got a feel for using that dang detector I was in hog heaven.

The next day I went to the local historical society and asked if they had any information on the beach or any old pictures. They sure did! There were pictures of people swimming there wearing the old time bathing suits like they wore in the late 1800’s and I also saw an old dock. There is no dock there now but I could see exactly where it lined up with the train depot, which is still there.

I decided to check that area out too but I will save that for another story