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.

So a guy in North Carolina reels in his line, thinking maybe a crappie or a bass or a catfish was wriggling on the other end – I don’t know what they expect to pull out of North Carolina rivers, but I’d bet serious dough he wasn’t expecting to yank a piranha from the water. Yet, that’s what came ashore, with its little razor-point teeth snapping at whatever was handy, in this case the angler’s knifeblade and not his fingers or toes. Years ago I encountered piranhas, at a safe distance, in the Amazon. That is where piranhas belong, in distant jungle rivers, where National Geographic or the Discovery Channel can film them stripping the steak off a hapless cow. Let us hope that the piranha that was caught in North Carolina was a solitary fish, tossed there by some misguided soul who had been keeping the piranha as a “pet.” Let us hope the piranha was not the advance scout for some vast school of piranhas following the warming ocean currents north. Let us hope our misguided soul, if there was one, didn’t dump a breeding pair of piranhas into that river, or a pregnant female that had already laid her eggs, sowing a piranha population in that river. Let us hope -- fervently, now -- that we never catch a piranha at Upper Dam. Say "Amen."

And yesterday my pal Trout Boy sent me the following Associated Press dispatch dated July 12:

Alarmed by reports about an invasive algae found in the Connecticut River, biologists from Vermont and New Hampshire will meet tomorrow with representatives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and river groups to make plans for combating it, authorities said yesterday. At issue is the spread of Didymosphenia geminata, also known as didymo and "rock snot," which has been found in two locations of the White River and in northern reaches of the Connecticut River, which separates Vermont and New Hampshire. The microscopic algae result in thick mats on river and stream bottoms in infested waters. The algae can stick to fishing gear, boats and boots and can live in car trunks for weeks.

There is no known treatment.

Invasive species. From milfoil in Maine ponds, to piranhas in North Carolina, to "rock snot" in the White River, to smallmouth bass in the Rapid River, invasive species are changing our world, and not for the better.

My friend TWBII e-mailed to tell me that he had taken his young son, TWBIII, fishing in the Wild River the other day and that they had caught several smallmouth bass. Smallmouth bass!? Out of the Wild River, a beautiful coldwater trout stream that comes tumbling out of the White Mountains and joins the Andro at Gilead!? I thought, “No! No! Say it isn’t so!” Then I opened the accompanying digital photo and breathed a huge sigh of relief. What they had caught were suckers. TWBII is a Land Cruiser guy, not a fish guy, thank goodness.

The Baghdad School of Flyfishing

We flew into Baghdad on a Charlie-130, combat loaded, strapped into webbed jump seats, bouncing along on the choppy air. Riding in a C-130 in turbulence is sort of like driving over a logging road in a four-wheel-drive with bad suspension. At the end of the ninety-minute ride, the pilot executed a couple of evasive maneuvers, then dove for the tarmac, leveled off and made a feather-soft landing. Welcome to Iraq, land of high heat, mortal danger, few comforts, and giant carp.

No, I didn’t come for the fishing. But as long as I’m here, what’s wrong with investigating the possibilities? I heard stories of huge carp lurking in the Tigris River, and in a Tigris-fed lagoon which the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein created to reflect the glory of one of his many palaces. En route to Iraq I heard about a soldier who had hauled a carp out of that lagoon that weighed 65 pounds and whose head and tail hung over the edges when laid across the hood of a Humvee. On my first visit to the PX at Camp Liberty I discovered a selection of fishing poles. Not flyrods, but still, the fact that there’s a market for fish sticks in Baghdad was an encouraging sign. Someone must be fishing. Then I discovered Joel Stewart’s website, baghdadflyfishing.com, dedicated to helping devotees of “the quiet sport” find a bit of down-time pleasure in a hard place. Who would have guessed?

The website has pictures which may strike a stateside civilian as somewhat bizarre: guys in camouflage soldier suits holding flyrods in one hand and exotic species of fish in the other. Not just carp, but barbels, “asps,” stinging catfish, and other creatures that we fervently hope we never pull out of a Maine pond.

I’m going fishing. In Baghdad. More to come.

The Bro’s flyrod had a good bend in it, because a nice trout was at the other end of the line, and not for the first time that day. He was sitting in his canoe on our favorite pond, which at the time he was sharing with a few other anglers, none of whom were having any success. The pond was calm and voices traveled, so the Bro could hear someone in another canoe say, “Jeez, he’s got another one!”

The Bro is a watchful guy. The reason he was catching fish when other anglers were not, was that he saw what was going on, both on the water and in the water. On the water the silent rises, with only the occasional dorsal breaking the surface, indicated the trout were feeding just under the surface, taking emergers before they could wriggle out of their shucks. So the thing was, if you didn’t get a look under the water to see what the trout were feeding on you probably wouldn’t catch any fish, because they were being highly selective. This is a first principle: match the hatch. Yet it’s amazing how many anglers simply guess at it and don’t take the trouble to watch carefully, to look under the surface. The Bro is patient. He takes the time, makes the effort, instead of just paddling out there and whipping the water. So he catches fish.

That day, the big trout were munching on a small delicacy matched by a size 18 emerger. Nothing else would do, and when the Bro found a good match in his flybox he started getting results. He didn’t get a lot of fish, but the ones he got were quality, the sort of fish that anglers ice down and rush to taxidermy artist Dave Footer.

Catch the fly first. Then you’ll catch the fish.