Good Fishin' in Saddam's Private Lakes

[unhappycamper]

Good Fishin' in Saddam's Private Lakes
Orlando Sentinal | February 28, 2008

Ray Combs thought he'd witnessed the wildest fishing action that the world had to offer.

But that was before the Orlando videographer hopped a military cargo plane to Baghdad. There, as Black Hawk helicopters flew overhead, he watched soldiers cast lines into a man-made lake near where Saddam Hussein reputedly kept his harem.

"I have been on boats shooting video as an 18-foot hammerhead ate a 200-pound tarpon mere feet away from me," said Combs, 32. "But . . . it doesn't compare to the surreal feeling of watching soldiers fish while holding their rifle in one hand and a spinning reel in the other."

Combs, creative director of Reel Time Productions, recently took a small crew to Iraq to film for television a morale-boosting tournament called Operation Catchfish. He wanted to explore the odd juxtaposition of fishing in a war zone.

"Nobody thinks of fishing in Iraq," he said. "You think of desert, you think of the war; but you don't think of fishing.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,163009,00.html