Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ? Whether they fish for bass or billfish, one trait most tournament anglers have in common is a fear of telling the truth.

Trying to get accurate information out of them is all but impossible. They’re afraid that they might give something away to a competitor and end up losing the tournament.

Those who compete in saltwater tournaments are more concerned about revealing where they fished, while bass anglers worry about having others find out what lures they used.

You’d think that bass pros, who get paid by tackle companies to use their products, would be thrilled to praise the lures that helped them to the first-day lead in a tournament.

Aside from a handful of fishermen, they don’t talk about their tackle until the tournament ends. Then you can’t shut them up, as they go into great detail about colors, weights, line strength, rod length, reel gear ratios and the like.

Texas bass pro Alton Jones, who has competed in seven consecutive BASSMASTERS Classics, told me his fear is that another fisherman who is doing something similar might be able to make a slight change in his lure selection and catch a bigger stringer.

“He might be using the same lure, but a different color,” Jones explained. “When he finds out what I’m using, he might try that color, and if he’s on better fish, that could be enough for him to beat me.”

One of the truly nice guys on the pro bass circuit, Jones is a straight shooter when it comes to talking about his lures: He doesn’t say anything until the tournament is over. Other anglers talk in generalities, while other pros flat-out lie.

At the Lake Toho Pro-Am bass tournament recently, Arizona pro Ish Monroe told weighmaster Terry Segraves that he was catching his fish on a plastic worm. Monroe later confided to me that he had caught a couple of bass on a worm, but his best fish came on a totally different lure.

“I wasn’t lying to Terry,” he said. “I just didn’t tell him the whole truth.”

That’s better than the pros who concoct stories about using a lure that’s not even in their tackle boxes. I remember an FLW Tour event where one of the top 10 pros was telling me about catching schooling bass on a particular brand of soft-plastic jerkbait.

While I was jotting down the details, a gentleman from a rival lure company walked up to the pro, handed him two bags of jerkbaits and said, “Here are those baits you needed.” The pro kept talking about the other lure until I asked him about the ones in his hand.

“Oh, I’m just trying to help out my sponsor,” he said. “I’m catching them on these baits, but these guys don’t sponsor me.”

Offshore anglers will tell you what baits they used, unless they’re doing something really different, like slow-trolling ballyhoo or using speedos on a downrigger. In that case, they’ll simply say they used live bait.

Ask them where they caught their sailfish or dolphin or kingfish and you’ll get answers ranging from, “In the corner of the mouth” to a general answer like “Off Miami” to a lie.

The rule of thumb for the liars is to name a location that they passed on the way to their hotspot.

So if they fished off Jupiter, they’ll say they fished off Lake Worth. The less creative prevaricators say they fished in the opposite direction, so instead of Jupiter, they’ll say Key Largo.

What most of them don’t realize is they could tell the truth and never have to worry about other anglers fishing around them.

That’s because everyone will assume they’re lying and fish somewhere else.