What Sluice Mat Should I Use? (The Specs You Need Before Anyone Can Answer)

“What sluice mat should I use?” is the most common question in gold recovery, and the least answerable without numbers. Doc’s long-standing point on the What Mat Should I Use? page still holds: even commercial ops get this wrong, and a short video or a parts list without specs turns into guesswork. This article modernizes that “prescription” idea. First you gather required inputs. Then you match a scenario. Only after that does a specific Gold Hog mat layout make sense.

There is no single “best sluice mat.” There are mats that fit a measured width, flow, gold size, and machine type, and mats that fight those conditions.

The prescription model: required specs first

Before anyone, friend, forum, or manufacturer, can recommend a layout, collect this sheet. Write it down; don’t estimate from memory at the truck.

Required specs

1. Inside sluice width (inches), and whether the box flares
2. Usable mat length (inches) and how many sections you can stage
3. Water: approximate GPH or measured depth and surface speed at working pitch
4. Pitch you actually run (or the range you can adjust)
5. Classification: screen size, or “unclassified” if that’s honest
6. Gold size you’re optimizing for: pickers / coarse flake / fine flake / flour (approx mesh if known)
7. Feed rate: light recreational scoops vs continuous shovel vs hopper-fed volume
8. Setup type: stream sluice, compact highbanker, flared highbanker, beach, or cleanup tray
9. Material: normal gravel, sticky clay, black sand, crushed ore, etc.

Optional but helpful: a 30-second video of water running clear across the empty (or mat-installed) box, shot from the side and from above. That video often answers more than a paragraph of adjectives.

If you only send “I have a highbanker and want fine gold,” every answer you get is fiction.

How to think about Gold Hog mats

Browse the full sluice mats lineup with roles in mind:

• Talon Mat , Higher engagement / flow interruption. Often toward the head of a run where you need capture and exchange across a wider size range.
• Riverhog Mat , Frequently used in mid/lower sections or alternated when you want continued recovery without keeping the entire box at maximum interruption.
• Wave Mat , Another pattern to deploy where your measured flow and gold size fit; verify with tails, don’t assign it by internet lore alone.
• Bedrock 2.0 Mat , Consider when your depth, pitch, and target size call for that profile, again as part of a layout, not a one-mat religion.

A recurring field pattern (not a law): more aggressive matting near the feed, then smoother or complementary patterns downstream so fine gold can stay in the bed load instead of getting relaunched by constant turbulence. That idea shows up throughout Doc’s proportional-force teaching, match interruption to the job, then give fines a place to finish.

Scenario tables (start here, then test)

These tables are starting prescriptions. Your tailings pan is the final authority.

Scenario A – Creek stream sluice (classified gravel, mixed flake)

Typical gear: stream sluices such as the Mini Stream Sluice or Stream Sluice.

Watch-outs: Unclassified cobbles rolling through a short box. Side current from poor placement. Leaving the tail section packed solid all afternoon without a check.

Scenario B – Compact highbanker (mobility, moderate feed)

Typical gear: compact highbankers.

Watch-outs: Using compact capacity like a production plant. Changing pitch and water together so you never learn which variable mattered.

Scenario C – Flared / higher-volume highbanker (fines emphasis)

Typical gear: larger highbankers such as the Raptor Flare 2.0.

Watch-outs: Flooding the flare until depth erases the width advantage. One mat type glued end-to-end “because it was on sale.”

Scenario D – Beach / black sand / flour-fine gold

Typical gear: controlled-flow setups aimed at flour gold, not creek cobble layouts.

Watch-outs: Copying a creek layout onto beach sand without a new test. Judging success only by how black the mat looks.

Scenario E – Cleanup / secondary concentration

Typical gear: short cleanup runs / secondary boxes, not primary production feed rates.

Watch-outs: Running cleanup like primary production. Skipping a tails check because “it’s only concentrates.”

What we are looking for in a 30-second video

Film this:

1. Wide shot of the whole setup at working pitch
2. Side shot showing water depth on the mat (include a ruler if you can)
3. Top shot showing distribution across the width
4. Material screen size, pump setup, and gold size target

That package turns “what sluice mat should I use?” into something answerable. Pair it with the checklist on the existing What Mat Should I Use? resource and the Proportional Force / mat-selection videos Doc points to there.

A simple decision sequence you can reuse

1. Fill the required specs sheet.
2. Pick the scenario table closest to your day.
3. Choose a head/mid/tail role layout from the mats hub.
4. Install carefully; direction, seams, no lifted corners.
5. Clear-water check, then classified test, then tails pan.
6. Change one variable.
7. Only then consider swapping a mat section.

If you skip to step 7 first, you’re shopping, not prospecting.

final thoughts

Bring numbers. Match the scenario. Test like you mean it. The right Gold Hog mat layout is the one that holds the gold size you care about under your gph/inch and feed rate, not the one that won an argument in a comment thread. Use the What Mat Should I Use? page and the sluice mats catalog as the prescription pad; use your tailings pan as the pharmacist who refuses to guess.