I met Fred Back in the 90's when he was assigned to the El Cajon Fire Dept as Fire Inspector. I was doing a lot of dredging back then and we of course stated talking about prospecting. He ask me if I ever metal detected. I told him I had a GMT but I had never found any gold with it. He asked if I wanted to get my first nugget detecting and we planned a trip to the Cargo's near Yuma. When we got to the location he was looking for, Fred got out of the truck, setup his detector and walked about 50 feet for the first nugget of the day.
I got very excited thinking how easy this was going to be. That was at 9am. At 3pm fred had three nuggets and I had the Skunk. I was ready to hang it up for the day when Fred said it was time for me to get my first nugget. He took me a short distance down the wash to a large pile of dirt. He said the old timers had pushed the dirt off the bedrock to get to the better material.
After knocking down part of the pile I got a good target. A few minutes later I found my first nugget using a detector. Anyone that knew Fred won't be surprised by this story. He got great pleasure helping others to improve their skills. But he did have set of Rules he wanted everyone else to follow, He got the first, the most, the biggest and the last.
This is Fred on our last trip in January this year. Even though he had to wear his O2 tank he wouldn't pass up the opportunity to hunt for nuggets.
I will miss him.
