In morning trade, the ASX small cap gold stock was up as much as 142% to a 52-week high of 6.3 cents.

The gold explorer's shares have pulled back since then but remain up 100% to 5.3 cents at the time of writing.

Why is this ASX small-cap gold stock rocketing?

Investors have been scrambling to buy Caprice Resources' shares this morning after it released an update on its phase one reverse circulation (RC) drill program at the Island Gold Project in Western Australia.

According to the release, phase one drilling has returned exceptional thick, high-grade gold intersections from testing previously unrecognised, high-grade, structurally controlled, cross-cutting Break of Day analogue gold targets.

Break of Day is a reference to a trend found at the Cue Gold Project owned by Ramelius Resources Ltd (ASX: RMS).

Management notes that multiple thick, stacked high-grade gold lodes were intersected at depth and down plunge from surface workings that remain open in several directions with drilling constrained to less than 100m vertical depth. It believes this could mean there is a substantial maiden resource opportunity at the Island Gold Project.

It also highlights that there is still 5km of highly prospective strike to be tested with numerous identical structures identified between the New Orient and Shamrock historical gold workings.

'Exceptional gold results'

The ASX small cap gold stock's CEO, Luke Cox, was delighted with the news. He commented:

It's a great pleasure to be delivering these exceptional gold results from our Island Gold Project December drill programme. These first 10-holes of the planned 40-hole drill programme have highlighted mineralisation thickening and increasing grade down plunge compared to the near surface gold mineralisation. Even more encouragingly, multiple stacked lodes were intersected by this drilling.

Identical structural settings are present in historical workings at the New Orient Gold Mine in the north and at Shamrock in the south, and these fertile structures have been mapped at multiple locations within the host banded iron formations along the five kilometres of strike connecting these historic workings; providing numerous additional greenfield targets and highlighting an enlarged scale to the project.

Cox spoke about the company's phase two drilling plans. He said:

The Phase 2 RC drill programme will continue to test this highly prospective structural corridor through Baxter, Golconda and Vadrians Hill, before moving north to test additional cross-cutting structures, with the objective of delivering a potentially significant Island Gold Project maiden resource in the coming months.

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