Go with the traditional methods - "loaming" will lead you to the source as ably described by Jack London
http://www.online-literature.com/poe/49/
"........He moved down the stream a few steps and took a second pan full of dirt.
Again came the careful washing, the jealous herding of the golden specks, and the wantonness with which he sent them flying into the stream when he had counted their number.
"Five," he muttered, and repeated, "five."
He could not forbear another survey of the hill before filling the pan farther down the stream. His golden herds diminished. " Four, three, two, two, one," were his memory-tabulations as he moved down the stream. When but one speck of gold rewarded his washing, he stopped and built a fire of dry twigs. Into this he thrust the gold-pan and burned it till it was blue-black. He held up the pan and examined it critically. Then he nodded approbation. Against such a color-background he could defy the tiniest yellow speck to elude him.
Still moving down the stream, he panned again. A single speck was his reward. A third pan contained no gold at all. Not satisfied with this, he panned three times again, taking his shovels of dirt within a foot of one another. Each pan proved empty of gold, and the fact, instead of discouraging him, seemed to give him satisfaction. His elation increased with each barren washing, until he arose, exclaiming jubilantly:
"If it ain't the real thing, may God knock off my head with sour apples!"
Returning to where he had started operations, he began to pan up the stream. At first his golden herds increased--increased prodigiously. " Fourteen, eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-six," ran his memory tabulations. Just above the pool he struck his richest pan--thirty-five colors....."
It's worth a read
Casper
and the best thing is when you go out to do it for 'real' it's not your first time eh!- think about it 
