Ha cool how did I miss this! nice catch the one that someone said looks like a bow fin is a wel's catfish! if you decide you want to do a little carping again we would be glad to take you out!!

TreeBass and all our troops
Thanks for the service to our great country.
Glad your home.

God Bless our troops and God Bless the USA

Tom H

Enjoyed the pics!

Man....those ones you called minnows.....pretty big for minnows.....must be some Texas strain

Thanks for your service and for what you do. It is deeply appreciated

treebass
so how was camp slayer to you? i know the place very well i was there for 2 years with kbr. the theatre was also a good place to catch fish at also and also the eod house boat dock. the best thing we found for them was iraqi bread in a dough ball seemed they didnt want to eat the defac food very well lol. good to see pics of it again. ive heard after i left last year a lot of changes were made to the place.
take care and glad your back home from there
mark

Slayer was very nice, especially compared to other places in country. We actually had great luck using the stuff the DFAC called steak for bait. The local nationals would go crazy when we threw the fish back. They just don't get the idea of catch and release

They are making all kinds of changes. Some good, and some would be concerned about. It will be interesting to see it in the next year or so. I'm sure I will get the chance...

Thanks for your service Mark You KBR guys took alot of abuse, but continued to do your job anyway, making it easier for me to do mine. Thanks

thanks for sharing the pics!

i knew some people used the sausage with mixed results there but there steak when they start cooking it friday morning then served friday night guess it would stay on the hook pretty good lol. yeah the local nationals didnt like the catch and release the guys when i first got there told me fish was very expensive for them to buy on the economy so wanted all i caught and cooked it there at work lol. but same there as here some people eat carp lol..... the way they cooked it i wasnt going to try it but they used a fire barrel we had for them for heat in the winter, it had so much diesel put in it i wasnt eating anything off of it but they said it was ok lol. i may be going back over there if my last job offers me what i want but ill wait and see after three years just in iraq it almost seems like a regular job lol.
hopefully you wont have to go back over there anymore and you can just say yep ive been and not have to go thru what you military personal have to go thru over there. us civilians as you know its quite a bit easier for us over there
take care
mark

Mark, several of my friends just went over, and one of my civilian friends is getting ready to come home. Unfortunatly, I will probbly end up over there again, nature of the job. I do love my job, but its the leaving the family behind thing that gets ya. Be safe and good luck with your decision. And again, thanks for all you do

Awesome bunch of fish! Glad you get a chance to do some fishing while you're over there making us all proud.

Those are some pretty nice carp! I bet you had a lotta fun catching them even if you don't normally go after 'em hehe.

I was going to point out that the long, skinny fish with the big mouths were Asp, but I see you already mentioned it hehe.

The other fish is a Wels Cat, looks like you had that right as well.

Wels cats can actually get to be OVER 200 pounds!

Thanks Starless, yes, although I don't actively pursue or normally fish for carp or buffalo, they are great fish to catch. I just wish I could have fished more. Any fishing is good fishing, especially if your catching.

Here's a link to a blogger that fished in the same location as well as up north. Enjoy it.


http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...i%2Bfish%26star

Treebass -

Thanks for sharing the pics. Thank you also for your service to our country. You guys are hero's. We support you and your mission. Eternal thanks.

P.S. Canned sweetcorn (if available) would likely be a killer bait on those carp.

Corn huh? I'll give it a try if I have to return anytime soon... These guys would not bite the typical store bought baits, just bread and steak

Bread and Steak huh? Sounds like Saddam was spoiling them! Lol. Carp do have a weakness for sweet corn though, I'd give that a try.

What a blast from the past. I spent most of the first year of the war at Slayer before going north into Irbil, Kirkuk and Mosul. It was not as sophisticated then, lol. For the first four months there was no KBR so we used MRE beef jerky for bait and fished with cane poles and some hooks I had scrounged scavanging one of Saddam's resorts. The line came from 100mph cord. I never did manage one of those huge carp but caught plenty of the strange eel/carp cross breed fish. Those were ugly fish. One day when the water started drying up in the lake we let some locals in to net whatever fish they could. They pulled a four foot long beast out of that lake. It was amazing, and kind of scary at the same time.
Bless you, and glad you made it home safely. Best of luck to you in the future. I, fortunately retired from the Reserves last year with 22 years of service.
PS....I see from your pics that the Iran/Iraq War Museum is still not finished......

Nixie, thanks for your service. I still have a few years to go. The museum was stopped due to tensions in the area, got interesting for a while.

We called them slither fish, but believe they are actually wels catfish. I assume your talking about the pic below.