What makes a prospector?
Geologists do the research first and learn all they can about an area. They'll go out and look at the rocks and try and interpret what the rocks are trying to tell them and figure out where the ore came from and where it is likely to be now.
They commonly take geo-chemical samples to send away for assay for things like gold and other elements like copper, arsenic, tungsten etc, that may occur with the gold. But the problem with this is that you've got to pay to get the samples assayed and if you're taking a lot of them it becomes a significant cost.
Of course it's easier for a geologist who's with a company and can afford this then follow up with drilling. I couldn't afford this so I had to go right back to basics and learn the old art of prospecting again. I had to become a prospector like they were a hundred years ago. I learnt to be able to detect minute amounts of gold, down to one part per billion, in the pan. The gold had to be free gold but invariably if it out crops on the surface, the rock weathers and the gold is released as tiny free particles. I taught myself to pan, down to these incredible amounts, which I suspect the assay laboratories then couldn't detect at those levels. That was my main method of exploration.
I went to a place in Western Australia that was reputed to be a fine gold (Carlin) deposit way out in the Gascoyne.
After speaking to the Geologist in charge, who said there was no visible surface gold, I walked over the hill and took five samples from the surface soil and panned them using my techniques and each one of them had gold in it!
From that moment on I knew I could find a Carlin fine gold deposit if it outcropped on the surface and from then on that was my main method of exploration. It cost me nothing except effort and the water that I'd carry with me. I reckoned doing that, as crude as it was, I could still compete with the companies because I was actually there in the field doing the work, not sitting in the office dreaming about it!
You just have to switch your eye in to look for that tiny, tiny speck, it's almost microscopic, but when you get the sun on gold, it glints like a piece of a jewel. It just needs that extra look to be able to do it!