Fishing in Iraq

Stars & Stripes:

It was well after dark and the musty waters of the Euphrates River had taken on the color of greased gunmetal as they skirted the city.

A rickety fishing boat coasted silently along the reed-choked banks and closed distance with a group of jet boats piloted by U.S. Marines. The patrol had been uneventful until now, but when the beam of an infrared spotlight revealed electric wires and no passengers in the Jon boat, the Marines grew concerned.

“Please let that not be a waterborne IED,” Capt. Shane Cote, 35, of Deep River, Conn., said as one of his Small Unit Riverine Crafts, or SURCs, motored ahead to inspect the boat.

Cote’s worry turned to relief when crewmen radioed back that the vessel contained no explosives. The wires were probably left behind by one of the many Iraqi fishermen who specialize in a form of angling called electro-shock fishing.

Instead of using a rod and a reel, the Iraqi sportsmen use a flashlight to blind and confuse river fish. They then shock the fish by jabbing it with an electrode hot-wired to a battery or generator. The angler then uses a net to scoop the fish out of the river.

“It’s wild,” Cote said of the fishing technique. “These people do the most dangerous things.”

In the last several months, though, Cote and his boat crews have had a lot more dangerous things to worry about than electric fishing devices.

As U.S. troops wage a renewed campaign to rid Ramadi of insurgents and criminal gangs, Cote’s Dam Security Unit Two has played a growing role in efforts to capture key cell leaders and interdict insurgent mortar and rocket teams who have taken to the river to avoid checkpoints on land.

At the same time, Cote’s men have found themselves shooting their way out of riverbank ambushes or taking cover from waterfront mortar attacks.

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There is more. The fishing part of the story reminds me of a joke about a game warden who sees a guy with a big stringer of fish and asks him where he caught them. The fisherman offers to take him out and show him and the next day as they anchor, the fisherman takes a stick of dynamite out of his tackle box, lights the fuse, and throws it in the water and when the stunned fish rise to the surface he scoops them up with his net. The game warden is stunned and says I can't believe what you just did. The fisherman lights the fuse on another stick of dynamite that he pulled from his tackle bax and he hands it to the game warden and says, "you gonna talk, or fish?"