Last month's column on how an angler qualifies for the term “great” prompted a flurry of correspondence. Amid much else, it brought to light a telling quote attributed to Jerome K. Jerome, the author of the wonderful Three Men in a Boat. Jerome was talking not about great anglers, but about the qualities even a merely good angler needs to possess.

Here is what he said: “Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing. But that is a mistake. Mere bold fabrication is useless. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.”

What insight. What perspicacity. How true. Anyone who cannot lie through their teeth backwards while quoting John xiii - no, it is much better if we look it up for ourselves - is not worthy of the name angler.

Old hands know that in what we call the “alternative truths” business, the trick is to avoid the middle ground because the sheer scope it offers can lead the unwary into trouble. To be convincing, an alternative truth should either not be overly ambitious or else should involve a claim that, in its ambition, is so preposterous as to be possibly - just possibly - true. I refer to these alternatives as “the ploy simple” and “the ploy complex”.

The aim of the ploy simple is to achieve a margin of superiority over our friends sufficient to produce in them a gratifying combination of lowered self-esteem, deep depression and envy. The trick with this ploy is to wait until, at the end of the day, the others have made their claims about the alleged sizes of fish caught or numbers landed and then to cap each by a telling, yet credible amount. Something in the range of 15 to 20 per cent works well for me, although a straight doubling may be possible if only beginners are present.

The aim of the ploy complex is so to exceed the bounds of probability with our claim that only someone inviting ridicule would normally make it - and yet here we are, with what remains of our reputation at stake, making it with such earnestness, with such an apparent weight of circumstantial evidence, with such delicate embellishments with the faintly possible or the vaguely familiar, as to sow the seeds not of doubt, but of truth.

In the main, witnesses are unhelpful to either endeavour. There are occasions, though, when the presence of others - not witnesses, but those who can be convinced that they have seen enough to be as good as witnesses - can prove to be a godsend.

I have room for just one example. We are, say, after a dire session, so desperate to have something to show for our efforts by close of play that, having sighted a gudgeon strayed into the margins, we dash after it with our landing net. Our foot catches on a stone, we trip, fall headlong and end up gudgeon-free, soaked to the skin, holding a broken line. Suddenly, one of our number appears from around the bend upstream and makes towards us. A social embarrassment? A disaster for the reputation? Enter the ploy complex.

A gesture towards our dripping personage, followed by the arms-wide gesture that indicates monster fish, followed by an agitated pointing to the deep, dark pool under the bank opposite, will soften up our approaching friend before he or she is within earshot.

Silent openings and closings of the mouth - fishlike gloopings, if you like - will give the impression of words stillborn as we try, apparently traumatised, to explain what has happened. A seemingly involuntary trembling of the hands and a rolling of the eyes - this last not overdone - will compound the effect.

By now our friend is nigh and primed for our story of the gigantic fish that took in that deep, dark pool and then careered away with such power that we were - yes, we realise how ridiculous it must sound - yanked off our feet and bodily towed downstream behind it.

A speedy follow-through is important. Something such as “took the very fly I was showing you only this morning” is good. Or, while offering our broken line for inspection: “Went around that fallen log over there. Smashed me clean - look.”

Confronted with dripping angler, dark pool, sunken log, shattered line, trembling hands and rolling eyes not overdone, the suggestible angler may imagine that he has seen it all - as good as seen it, anyway - with his own eyes.

The more gullible, in the bar later, might well come to think that, yes, they thought that they might have seen a big fish in that pool a couple of weeks before. The experienced, desperate not to be left behind, might well volunteer that they had hooked it once - twice, actually. The truly brazen might remember landing it before letting it go to fight another day and then launch into an intended show-stealing story about why they told no one until now.

In such small ways, disasters can be made triumphs, clumsiness the stuff of legend. Alternative truths play a key role in angling. I am grateful to Jerome for his reminder.

- Brian Clarke's fishing column appears on the first Monday of each month

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