PLS_2015_Winter_DDH_Zoomed_in_INSET_R600W_to_R780E_04May15

A good start to the week for gold up $12 a ounce to $1291 in early trading.

Here are a few of the mining headlines that caught my eye this morning.

Fission Uranium - (FCU:TSX) - Fission continues to intersect strong uranium mineralization at the the PLS project in Saskatchewan. This morning 10 angled drill holes were released from the R600W, R00E and R780E zones. Of particular interest is hole hole PLS15-352 (line 615W)which returned 28.32% U3O8 Over 12.0M within a larger interval of 11.09% U3O8 over 31.5m. Hole PLSS 15-632 is based on land is half a kilometre west of the Triple R deposit.

In my opinion FCU is the best uranium development project going right now. The maiden resource in January showed 79.6 M pounds indicated and 25.9 million pounds inferred resources. The PLS project continues to get larger as mineralization has been found in four zones over a 2.7 km strike length.

A PEA is expected to be completed this summer which will be a major catalyst for investors.

Ross McElroy, President, COO, and Chief Geologist for Fission, commented,

"We are continuing to see spectacular high-grade growth at R600W. With high-grade mineralization very near to surface, this land-based zone is located half a kilometer on trend from the Triple R deposit and remains open in all directions. The strength of the assays and robustness and style of the intersection show remarkable similarities to the Triple R deposit and continue to impress us. The addition of the spectacular mineralized intersection in PLS15-352, significantly upgrades the potential of the R600W zone. We are also very pleased to see further R780E zone growth on multiple lines."

Fission is cashed up after completing at $20 million dollar financing at the end of April at $1.50 per share (flow through).

News also from top uranium exploration company NexGen Energy (NXE:TSXV) that they will be issuing a $20 million dollar bought deal at 50 cents a share. NexGen remains a more speculative play than Fission and is trading at ~$100 million market cap compared to ~$450 million of Fission.

Read: Fission Hits 28.32% U3O8 Over 12.0M at R600W Zone

Related: Video: Brent Cook and Ross McElroy discuss good Fission Uranium news, live from PDAC

First Mining Finance -(FF:TSXV) - First Mining Finance a newly listed TSXV company has increased its takeover bid for Coastal Gold (COD:TSXV). A bidding war for Coastal has developed between First Mining and Sulliden (SMC:TSX). The new offer from First Mining works out to an implied value of 6 cents per COD share.

"We continue to be very interested in a business combination with COD, which we think would be in the best interests of our shareholders and the independent shareholders of COD," said Keith Neumeyer, chairman of First Mining. "Even though Sulliden has increased its offer that offer is still worth far less than the current market price of COD shares. We find it difficult to understand how the COD board could reject our offer in favour of a weaker offer from Sulliden. We are now increasing our offer so that all shareholders of COD can be aware that there is a clearly superior alternative to the Sulliden offer available to COD shareholders. Our renewed offer can only be accepted by COD if the independent COD shareholders vote down the undervalued Sulliden offer and we again urge all independent shareholders of COD to vote against the Sulliden offer. We are also calling on the board of COD to postpone the COD shareholder meeting to allow the independent shareholders of COD to make an informed decision on which offer they believe is better."

Coastal Gold has been recommending investors take the offer from Sulliden and a shareholder meeting is planned for May 6th.

Sulliden and First Mining are both after COD's high grade underground resource of 5.5 Mt at 4.77 g Au/t for 844,000 indicated ounces & 0.84 Mt at 4.11 g Au/t for 110,000 inferred ounces .

First Mining was set up to be a "mineral bank" and pick up projects during the current weak market environment with the goal to hold high quality development projects.

Leading First Mining is Chairman Keith Neumeyer who was the founder of First Quantum Minerals and First Majestic Silver.

Other people and companies who have had success with the "bank" model include Seabridge Gold and Ross Beaty buying out of the money copper deposits.

One small junior also using the same business model would be CopperBank (CBK:CSE).

An interesting business model that can be very rewarding to shareholders but can take a long time to play out.

Which offer would you vote on? I personally would vote for the revised First Mining offer.

Read: First Mining Delivers Renewed Proposal to Acquire Coastal Gold Corp.

Discuss in CEO Live

This is not investment advice. All facts are to be checked and verified by reader. As always please do your own due diligence.