How to pan for gold

What a pan actually does

Panning is gravity separation in a bowl. You shake the pan to loosen the gravel and let the heavy grains sink to the bottom, then tilt it and wash the light material off the top. Repeat until only the heaviest grains — black sand and gold — are left. Nothing else is happening, and every step exists either to help gold settle or to keep it from riding out with the lights. Beginners lose gold in two ways: they tilt before the gold has had time to sink, and they wash too fast. Everything else is detail.

Set-up

Classify. Run your gravel through a ½-inch or ¼-inch screen over a bucket first. Rocks the size of a walnut hold no gold and flick real gold out of the pan when they roll. In fine-gold country, classify again through ⅛ inch.
Fill the pan two-thirds. More than that and you can’t stratify; less and you waste time.
Find slow, knee-deep water. You need enough depth to submerge the pan and enough calm that the current doesn’t do the washing for you. A tub on the bank works if you must.

The nine steps

Submerge and soak. Put the whole pan under, level. Let water in and break up clay with your fingers — lumps of clay carry gold away intact.
Shake to stratify. With the pan under water and level, shake it side to side and in a circle for ten to twenty seconds. You will feel the gravel loosen and settle. This is the step that puts the gold on the bottom. Do it longer than feels necessary.
Tilt and wash. Tip the pan away from you so the riffles are on the low side. Dip the far edge in and out of the water in a gentle forward-and-back motion; the lighter gravel washes over the lip while the riffles catch anything heavy trying to follow.
Re-level and shake again. Every few strokes, bring the pan level, shake, and tilt again. Alternating settle-and-wash is the rhythm. Rushing the wash phase is how gold leaves.
Pick out the rocks. When the coarse stones have washed to the surface, rake them off with your fingers — after checking them for a nugget, which happens more often than you’d think.
Work down to a cup of material. Keep cycling until a couple of tablespoons of dark sand and grit remain.
Finish with a thin film of water. Tip the concentrate into one side of the pan, add a little water, and swirl gently so the sand fans out in a crescent. Gold is heavier than black sand and lags behind the fan; it shows as a bright tail at the back of the crescent.
Snuffer or tweezers. Suck up flakes and flour with the snuffer bottle; tweezer pickers. Fingers lose more than they catch.
Bag the black sand. If you have a lot of fine gold, don’t finish in the field. Pour the concentrate into a bag and do the last step at home in a tub with good light.

Speed, pans and expectations

A beginner takes ten minutes a pan; a practised hand does it in three. That is fifteen or twenty pans an hour, which is why classifying first and testing systematically matter more than panning fast. A dark green or black plastic pan with two riffle sets shows fine gold best; steel pans need oiling and hide colour. Fourteen inches is the standard; ten-inch pans suit kids and clean-up.

Expect fine gold. On Alberta and Ontario rivers a good pan is a dozen specks you can only see when the pan is tilted to the sun. On Fraser bars or Klondike creeks it is a few flakes; a picker — a piece big enough to pick up with your fingers — is a real find anywhere in Canada. Weigh dry and log what you got: LocalKarat classes finds at 0.1 g, 0.5 g and 2 g, and honest numbers make your own map worth something.

Keep it legal and keep it clean

In every province the pan-and-shovel kit is the one class of gear you can use somewhere without a claim — but where and how differ. B.C. means it literally: a hand pan and a hand shovel, nothing else. Saskatchewan goes further and forbids even a shovel to move material — you scoop with the pan. New Brunswick requires a $100 prospecting licence before the first scoop. Check the province guide. Wherever you are, fill your holes, leave gravel in the stream, stay off spawning beds and clean-drain-dry your gear afterward.

General information for recreational prospectors — not legal advice. Rules change and vary by site; check the official sources listed under this article and the LocalKarat “Can I pan here?” wizard before you go.

Sources

Updated 2026-09.

Panning-area, claims, and regulation information on LocalKarat is general information for recreational prospectors — it is not legal advice. Mining, land-access, and environmental rules change and vary site by site. Verify current rules with the official sources linked on each page, get permission from private landowners and claim holders, and respect First Nations rights, settlement lands, and treaty areas.

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