I picked the wrong time to start prospecting....lol

Just started into the gold world, just finished my first batch of paydirt, so now I'm seasoned, huh?!?
hahahaha...as if. I would like to actually get my first pan of stream bed material and look for some color. Bummer I found a good web site a little too late. But I do wish Randy the best in his future endeavors.
I am on the East coast, live in Delaware County, PA and have been researching for the last couple months on where to look in my general region. From what I've seen, looks to be some locations in the counties to the West and North of me. There are hundreds of streams out there so finding one that will reveal color is the trick. Any advice would be appreciated.
Not sure if joining a club, either GPAA or LDMA local chapters, would be worthwhile, given my locality.
Do you folks ever spend the time to dig on a creek/stream that you think looks promising but was never verified prior to producing gold?
I have some water around me that have walked and see quartz in and around the banks. One way home from work I even stopped on the side of the road once to grab a pans' worth of creek sand and saw some black sand that was movable by a magnet. Wondering if most if not all creeks have this or an I onto something.
Anyway, thanks in advance for any info or advice you can offer.

Reed

Reed welcome to gold prospecting and gold fever!

There is gold to be found in PA. but most if not all will be glacial gold brought down by glaciers from Canada during the Ice Age.

Here's a bit of info on gold in PA.

https://www.goldrushnuggets.com/goinpe.html

Also there is a gold prospecting club in Pa called the "PA Prospectors"  you may want to join up and get to know some of them, they have meetings and it seems a outing or two so it would be a good start for you in your state with their help, if nothing else they have a bit of info on their website that may help you get started,here's a link to their website.

http://www.paprospectors.org/findings.aspx

Keep looking there are other gold forum out there still active, look/search for gold panning, gold prospecting, gold dredging, gold sluicing, nugget hunting, nugget shooting,  etc., etc. and you should find most of them which will lead you to other forums still active, most may not help you in your state but all will help you with the knowledge that is contain within all the postings, and even search for metal detecting for gold, which may not help you much in PA but there are many forums on metal detecting for gold maybe more forums than any other type of finding gold and most if not all of those forums have forum sections on all other type of finding gold and members from all over the USA and the world!!

I hope I see you on some of the other forums!!

Skip, A.K.A. Gold Seeker and or Au Seeker on most of the gold forums