How to Prspect for Gold

How do you prospect for gold and what are the materials needed for placer mining?   There are several different ways to prospect for gold.   Such as, dry land prospecting, dredging in water, and placer mining.   Placer mining is the digging of dirt in hills, streams, dry creek beds, and ravine’s and taking that same material and running it through a sluice or a high banker, and finally panning through it to find flakes and nuggets of gold.   I choose placer mining, because it is the cheapest and easiest way to get started without having much knowledge of mining.
  The following are some of the materials you will need in order to get started: a gold pan, a shovel, a pick, buckets, a magnet, a pry bar, a sluice, or a high banker.   Investing in classifiers and a snuffer bottle is also a good idea.
  The next step is finding a good area to prospect.   Personally, I try to find areas that have been washed out from a storm like crevasses between mountains.   Other places I look for are rivers that have had a lot of water flow or rushing water from the winter run off.   I look for these places because the gold gets washed down the mountains and in to these places.   The first objects you want to look for are places with big rocks, and boulders gold seems to catch in front and behind these places, or places were the water slows down.   High concentrates of black sand is another excellent place to prospect.   Black sand is very heavy like gold and collects in the same places that gold would.   There are two types of black sand, magnetite and hematite.   Magnetite is magnetic, and this is the type of black sand you should look for.
    Finding a place to put the sluice box is the next step.   The sluice box is a level piece of metal that has riffles in it and a material called miners moss.   The water flows over the riffles causing the gold and heavier material to get trapped under the riffles.   Miners moss is a product with a bunch of skinny pieces of rubber all weaved...