Beach hunting in Montenegro

I did have fun going beach detecting as much as I could while we were staying in Montenegro in 2014. There were several beaches to choose from, big or small, sand or stone, far or close. I would go for about 3 hours until I got tired of it. SOmetimes I got home with a huge smile, especially the first time I went with a guy and we found 2 golden rings in 2 hours on the closest big beach. I gave him one of the rings because I promised him fifty-fifty. I wouldn’t go without him because I wasn’t familiar with the law about beach hunting and I was afraid of what people would say. If I would have known that almost EVERYONE that came to talk to me ( a lot of people) would tell me they also have a detector for the beach, I could have started a month earlier, which would have been right after the thousands of tourists left.

THe nice thing about Montenegro is the very short length of the beaches -which are massively crowded in summer- and the very good climate. I was still going knee-deep into the sea in Mid-November. I even wore my hiking shoes to go into the water, as they were the sturdiest shoes I had taken. They did take a smell and afterwards, it seemed a better idea just to wear rubber boots (although the waves can be unpredictable and then you walk home with water in your boots and your socks and pants all wet).

I took my XP deus into the water as far as i could. The signal got through via the coax cable hack. When it was still warm enough to be in bathing suit, the water would come to my waist. The problem that arose then was ‘I don’t have a wading shovel to take the damn treasure out of the water !’.. So then it would take a lot of time to try and find the damn thing.

The settings to use XP DEUS in salt water: I can only say that I used the Wet Beach program (ground balance 27), on discrimination 10, 2 tones, sensitivity lowered to 75-80 for the wet part until no false signals came up. It was a very nice detector to hunt on dry and wet sand. On dry sand, you don’t need any special settings so change it back to your land settings to go as deep as possible as there is no wet sand to interfere. as soon as you start moving over wetter areas, the detector will start chattering and you will need to change ground balance to 27 and lower sensitivity until no more chatter.

One fact: ALL silver and gold jewellery was in the wet part where the water started or a bit deeper. I don’t know whether this is caused by the fact that I was the rare detector amateur with a wet sand detector and that all others had already dug up all dry sand jewellery, but that wouldn’t explain why I still found over 200 coins on the dry and not one bit of jewellery..

Another thing: there is almost no difference in position of the water in high or low tides because it is the Mediterranean. So it didn’t help to wait for low tide because the surf was always just at the same point. THe things that kept me away were the bigger waves. Not often but sometimes the waves were HUGE during several days and coming on like they were about to wipe the beach away. THe story I’ve heard several times was :’go after a storm, then jewellery is lying all over the beach’. Well, I didn’t find anything after the storm.

I must add, the finds below where gathered over 2 months of a lot of hours of detecting. People tend to post all their succesful hunts and golden rings, but they won’t post much when they find nothing, do they ? So I could also go for hours sometimes and find close to nothing. I returned to Montenegro a few time in the next years but never found much; Some guy told me there were 10 other detectorists now at a certain beach. But I also didn’t find much in the water, even when it was crystal clear and calm at the end of August. Detecting works in a myserious way..


Conclusion:

-I’m happy I finally paid back part of my XP DEUS with my finds of euros and gold. I got 100 euro and 150 for selling 3 14k rings.
-detecting on the beach is very rewarding because you’re AT A BEACH in the sun, or at least with a nice view.
-no need to ask anyones permission
-also rewarding because you can gather a bit of contemporary money and the most rewarding when you find gold, which has the most value. Unlike the crap I tend to find on the fields

beach detecting with XP Deus

XP Deus Underwater kit

This setup is smt I used for a VERY long time. It gives you access to the unit’s controls, you can watch the ID’s AND it protects the unit against water and dirt.

I was eyeballing the XP DEUS underwater kit for several months already but due to my financial status I decided to postpone the purchase of it.. (Actually, it’s 60 euro including the mail and it doesn’t matter whether I buy it now or in half a year ).
So a few days ago, my headphones went dead on me while detecting. LAter I was struggling to get the jack out of the adapter on the WS3, so the input jack then broke entirely off the little board. It’s a bit of a crappy thing, soldered with 4 little feet on the board, and I guess detecting for 2 months on saltwater beaches without covering it or cleaning it did NOT do it any good.

So I had to order the input jack anyway to have a spare and decided to order the whole underwater kit as it did seem a bit more protective for the WS3 control unit whilst I’m out in the cold and rain and whatever. Lately, I just attached it with either tape and in a later stadium, well still tape but only 1little piece of double-sided tape and very elegantly hidden, so .. I decided to try to put all stuff together and it seems pretty neat. At least I can now put the waterproof bag fixed on my sleeve to watch the ID’s, or change the menu (which is still possible while the unit is inside the bag), and the second advantage is the earphone-cable inside my sleeve, so no more long headphone cable HANGING IN MY WAY.

I only read one review of the underwater kit so far. The guy went diving with it and the sound did not come through very loud. It would also only go till 5 meter of depth but if you consider going deeper (or more professional for that matter), then simply buy a real underwater detector like the Excalibur (which is out of my league for the moment)