Gold prospectors love California's record drought. The state's severe drought has dried up streams, giving the prospectors easy access to streams once covered with water.

"We are able to get into areas now we have not been able to get into for years and years," Kevin Hoagland, Gold Prospectors Association of America's executive director of development, told CNNMoney, panning in a trickle of water that is normally three to five feet deep.

"With it being so low, it's so easy to get into some of these areas and be able to get into these cracks and crevices and do some prospecting."

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Still, thousands of people are not swarming to California streambeds in an 1849-style gold rush and he's not sure more gold is being found. "We have a lot of people out because they can get out."

However, veteran gold prospector Jack Barber told the AFP news agency that low water levels are helping him find more gold. In just a few minutes, he found his first gold of the day, a 12-miligram nugget worth about $5.

"It can pay off quite well, especially with the price of gold right now."

Low water levels are also attracting newcomers, although some aren't saying how they're faring. A good miner never tells how much gold he has because then others will follow him, says novice prospector Don Starr, according to AFP.

Prospectors love the low water levels, agrees Curt Timmons, a prospector and owner of the Little Digger Mining and Supply shop in Baldwin Hills, Calif. "They love it because they can get down to that bedrock without using any scuba equipment," he told NPR. "Normally it'd be about 6 feet over your head. And now it's so low, it'd probably be up to your knees in depth, if that."

Prospectors might be the only Californians loving the drought, according to NPR. Farmers are not bothering to plant crops, cities are under mandatory water restrictions and fisheries are in trouble. Water lines are about a hundred feet above the current water's surface at the San Gabriel Dam.

"It's a bad thing for those who need water, and I imagine it's not the best thing either for the fish that live in the rivers," Maury Roos, chief hydrologist at California's Department of Water Resources, told NPR.

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