A Good "Rainy?" Day at GMR

The long overdue first trip post.

After spending all day Saturday painting a house and eating BBQ I hit the hay early to get up early and drive up to the GMR for a full day of hunting.

Early in the drive it started raining but that couldn't deter me due to North Carolina weather changes every fifteen minutes.  Once I arrived at the 5th St. Park and started getting geared up and was immediately questioned by a man curious as to why he always see's people carrying assortments of shovels, buckets and other equipment down into the creek. 

That was the first of the many questionings I got.  One guy asked me if I was panning for gold and jewels, but a few more knowledgeable people asked if I found anything good. 

It stopped raining when I got there and was getting my waders on and all geared up and carried my shovel and screen over to the creek found a good spot to hop down and was determined to start out at a location I  filled one screen at and pulled out several medium size makos and a nice tiger shark tooth and then left.  So as I got down into the creek I didnt make it about five feet before I crunched onto some gravel, and it convinced me to scoop some up. 

I was rewarded with a slightly over 1" well serrated GW.  A good sign to start off the day.  So I kept digging around in that area and finding the usual assortment of smaller teeth when the wind started picking up, the clouds got darker and it started sprinkling.  I shrugged it off and kept at it until the wind started howling and brought with it a heavy shower.  So despite the waders keeping my bottom half dry, it wasnt about to do any good if the top half was soaked.  So I climbed up the muddy bank, tossing the screen and shovel up onto the grass so I could pull myself up using the trees at the top.  And started trudging back to the car as the rain came down.  I passed a couple teenagers at the park pavillion who just looked at a increasingly drenched guy carrying an odd assortment of gear with water dripping off his face walk to his car.  Figured it was time to go home.  But.. No.  Put on a rain coat, pulled the hood up, moved my tooth case into one of the pockets vice hanging off a wader suspender, picked up my shovel and screen and started trudging back to the creek.  I think those two teenagers must have thought I was crazy.

So I get back into the creek and start shoveling around and not twenty minutes later I stopped paying attention to finding and shoveling gravel and sorting thru it and realized the sun was shining!  I look up and other then a couple clouds there is a deep blue sky overhead and sunlight all around.  Bloody weather. 

After shoveling for awhile I thought about my friend who the week before, on his first trip ever took three shovel fulls of sand and mud instead of gravel and sifted thru, and pulled out a 2" GW in great condition.  Which left me pretty miffed because as far as teeth go, I didnt find anything. 

So as I was going thru another section of gravel I spied a sandy spot in between two gravel piles and threw three or four shovel fulls of sand on the top of the already accumulated gravel and lifted the 40lbs of material to a deeper area of the creek to wash out the sand and leaves and mud out.  So as the layers of sand were lowering in the screen s large dark colored piece of material started appearing.  Which I immediately thought was a big piece of reddish brown glass.  Then the piece of glass turned into a big GW right in the middle of the screen.  Which I then peed my pants.  Just a little.  Ok just kidding I really didnt pee my pants.  But after dropping the screen on a sand bar and picking out the tooth, washing off the remaining sand and doing a quick "Found a Big Tooth Dance" which I tripped and almost fell over I was shocked.  I finally found a decent sized great white.  Which beat my current largest great white of 1.5" 

After that It was all gravy mode.  Found several medium tiger shark teeth, a couple small mako's, a couple lucky pennies, a couple .22 calibre shells, and a few other fossils as well as the regular mix.  I kept at it until dark and just filled my last screen and noticed something large and toothy sticking out of some sand and gravel.  So since it was already getting dark I stopped shoveling, rinsed out the sand and leaves and started sifting thru it.  Which yielded the second largest tooth of the day.  Even though it was incredibly stream worn. 

By that time even though after finding a large tooth I didnt want to stop, it wouldnt have done any good to sift gravel in the dark because you could never tell the difference between teeth, fossils and pebbles so I called it a day happy with my finds, stopped by burger king on the way home, which was a bad idea because it made me sick to my stomach for the hour and a half drive.