When I slipped out between the two flaps of the tent I call home these days and stepped into the early Baghdad morning, the sun was a red rubber ball squinting through the perpetual haze of dust over Camp Victory. It was Sunday morning, which meant a few hours of free time away from the 12-hour-a-day, six-and-a-half-days-a-week work routine. Most mornings I wake up feeling like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.” This morning was different. I was going fishing.

My friend Lt. Col. Carmine Cicalese picked me up at 0700 in front of the 3rd Infantry Division DFAC – Dining Facility – where I take my meals. In the old Army, we ate in a mess hall and the food was cooked and served by soldiers. In the new Army, you eat food prepared and served by the mega-contractor KBR in a Dining Facility. There’s plenty of food, but if you were served the same food in a restaurant you probably would not choose to dine there again.

Carm, the G7 (don’t ask) with the 1st Cavalry Division in Camp Liberty, had scrounged up a couple of spincasting rods and a box of lures, hooks, bobbers, a package of beef jerky and a jar of Da-Glo yellow “stink bait.” Hey, don’t turn up your nose – we’re trash-fishing here. We drove in an Army-issue Ford Explorer to Z Lake, one of the several bodies of water carved into the flat terrain around the al Faw palace at the orders of you-know-who. Z Lake is so called because it is shaped that way. We started casting, working the shoreline, prospecting for strikes.

Carp, some of them gigantic, share Saddam’s ponds, lagoons and canals with stinging catfish, barbels, and something called asps. The asps are said to be a cross between a bass and a perch, though I have not verified that with an ichthyologist, and are said to take a dry fly. This information came to me from Sergeant First Class – you’ll love the name – Wade Walden, who joined me and Carm on the banks of the Z, toting a spincasting rod and a tackle pack full of gear he had ordered online from the States. “Don’t use Cabela’s,” he warned. “Takes forever.” SFC Walden fishes Z Lake regularly and has caught big carp and asp there. He said he has a friend who flyfishes, and usually shows up on Sunday mornings, but didn’t today. I’m hoping to meet him on a future Sunday.

We caught no fish. But I learned a thing or two from SFC Walden. I learned that Z Lake is a good spot. And I learned that there’s a fishing tournament coming up in August. I plan to enter. War is heck.