January 10, 2012.

To recap the last few days. We sailed down to Southside Bay on Ragged Island for a few nights. Our first day there was spent walking the beaches of Little Ragged Island. We found a few desirable sea beans here and there but nothing really stood out until I picked up “the find of the day”.

The Bahamanian Defense Force was probably doing some training here on the island and inexplicably somebody left behind one of their assault rifles.

Its chambered for the widely used NATO standard Hamburger Bean so ammo won't be a problem. Some days I just can't believe my good luck.

The second day at Southside was devoted to hunting. In the morning I took 5 lobster and our first Tiger Grouper ever.

He weighed in at a bit over 6 pounds and turned out to be damn fine eatin'. After lunch we headed down to some out of the way heads that rarely get done. The water was fairly deep but there were so many lobster that I just took the easy ones. If they were tucked in at all I just skipped em' and moved on to the next.

The afternoon in the water was just as short as the morning session and we soon headed home with 6 more bugs and our first Hogfish of the season.

After 2 nights in the fairly rolly anchorage it was time to sail back up to Hog Cay. After the short sail we set the hook and headed in to do a little hiking. While we were gone we had more friends show up in the anchorage so we had a really nice bonfire/ garbage burn/ cocktail hour in the evening.

Plans were made to go hunting today so of course we had to go as well. I can't help it, its a sickness. We've got some friends in the anchorage that don't go in the water anymore so we'll give away most of what we take. And take we did.

I plopped into the water and when the bubbles cleared there was a 3 ½ pounder in a crevice right between my feet. I went down, shot him and handed him to Christy in no time. The quickest lobster record now stands at about 12 seconds. It was that kind of day. A 3 mile round trip in the dink and home in less than 2 hours with 8 more lobsters in tow. I even saw a few more good sized Hogfish but I decided to pass on them.

Our friends are fed, the anchorage is dead calm, tomorrows a new day and I'm still feeling pretty lucky.