You should also watch the tide and weather. Go to the beach a couple hours before low tide and work the tide line as the water goes out. You will find, especially on ocean beaches that mother nature deposits items of similar weight together in small areas or along the same tide line. I have walked the beach for hours finding very few targets, then walked into a small area and started to dig pennies. One of the main rules to hunting is if you are digging coins Keep Digging Targets. After removing about a hundred pennies I recovered two nice gold rings. The entire area was only 20’ long and about 10’ wide. Watch for storms that can move a lot of sand. Around Long Island we watch for Nor Easters. Any time the wind blows parallel to the beach we can expect cuts in the sand that allow our detectors to reach areas previously buried to deep. My best day on Jones Beach was after a storm. I found five gold rings, six silver rings and three bracelets within an hour. The tide came up and pushed us out of the productive spot. You should also not limit yourself to one beach. Try some of the less popular beaches in the area. Go slowly, especially once you find a few coins. Walk slow and wave the coil slowly. This gives the metal detector time to penetrate deeper into the sand. Keep an eye on your coil height. Coil should only be an inch or so off the sand. Do not discriminate the junk. No one wants to dig flip tops, soda cans or fishing weights but there is a benefit from digging junk. First from the environmentalists perspective we end up cleaning the beaches. Second buried junk often masks the signal of legitimate targets buried nearby. I have seen this firsthand. On the north shore of Long Island we worked a small area of Bayville Beach. At first all we dug was junk, cans, flip tops and aluminum foil. After a couple passes we started to hit almost 100% coins. Then after removing 30-40 coins both Mike McMeekin and I each found a gold ring.
 

Cover your holes
It is always important to cover your holes. This basically prevents anyone from complaining about us which could end up making some beached off limits to metal detecting. Covering holes is also important when dealing with competition. I have walked onto a beach and observed another metal detector hunter that was there before me. I took a quick note of his path of holes. Although he had been walking a S shaped pattern which ranged from the low tide and up to the high tide mark. All of his holes we about 4’ off the high water mark. By noting this I was able to narrow my search pattern and quickly homed in a on a nice gold bracelet. So remember cover up your holes not only because its the right thing to do but also to protect target information from your competition.