GREENVILLE – This is a fish tale of a Tiger and his trail. And like most fishing stories, it’s really a whale of a tale … one of myth and supposition. One of truth and untruth. One of exaggeration. One of guesses. Of wishes.

And mostly (also like many great fishing stories) it’s about the one that got away.

On Thursday, somewhere up Moosehead way – maybe it was over in Kokadjo, or up in Seboomook, or on Tomhegan – Tiger Woods went fishing.

Maybe.

There it is. The word. The qualifier. The fisherman’s favorite tool.

Maybe.

By the end of the day, after miles of driving, hours of talking and plenty of calling, probing and hunting, one thing was perfectly clear: Nothing was perfectly clear.

“There were no Tigers on the east side [of Moosehead Lake], said Warden Sgt. Roger Guay after a busy 150-mile trek that took him to all of the fishing hot spots on that side of Maine’s largest lake.

“A few bears. Six of seven deer. A couple of moose. But no Tigers.”

Everywhere else around Greenville, the story was the same. The elusive Tiger hadn’t been spotted.

Back in Bangor, a would-be Woods turned out to be nothing more than a paper Tiger. And that seems as good a place as any to start.

No Tiger in sight

On Wednesday, independent Tiger sightings took place in both Bangor and Greenville. On Thursday, the Greenville story seemed to gain credence as at least one public official reported that he, too, had seen the elusive golfer, and other officials stood by their earlier report.

Bangor’s Tiger tale, however, began to change its spots early in the day … right about the time area golf pro Mark Hall read his morning paper.

“I read the story and just about [wet] my pants,” said Hall, who works as the pro at Felt Brook Golf Center in Holden.

That’s because he knew the “Tiger” who had supposedly ordered coffee at the Broadway Dunkin’ Donuts early Wednesday morning. As a matter of fact, Hall works with him and was with him at the time.

The would-be Woods: former Bangor High School star athlete Duane Peoples.

Hall said he thought the person who waited on him at Dunkin’ Donuts recognized him. Hall said he thought the person, Lou Lima Jr., knew he was kidding about Woods.

As it turns out, he thought wrong.

“He asked, ‘Are you golfers?”‘ said Hall, who obviously knew that Peoples’ resemblance to Woods might be fodder for a few laughs. “I said, ‘Yup, I’m working with him now. He dumped [coach] Butch [Harmon] after the U.S. Open.

“So he asked Duane, ‘Are you Tiger Woods?’ Duane said ‘No.’ Then he asked [Duane] to sign an autograph for him, and Duane said, ‘No. I’m not Tiger Woods.”‘

On Thursday morning, Hall was amazed to find out that what he thought was an innocent event had been misconstrued. Still, he understood how it happened.

“He’s a dead ringer for Tiger,” Hall said.

But a Tiger he’s not. The real Tiger lurked somewhere north. Watch out, here comes that word again. Maybe.

Word from Greenville: No Tiger

In Greenville, where Tiger supposedly had been spotted Wednesday (though a representative for International Management Group, the agency that handles Woods’ publicity, said he was actually in Alaska, not Maine), locals took the sighting with a grain of salt.

Up here, you see, celebrities come and go all the time. And natives think the rich and famous deserve to be left alone.

At the Lost Lobster restaurant, for instance, one employee said many people figure that silence can mean two things: Either nobody famous is around, or somebody famous IS in town and it’s none of your damn business.

“People think we hide Jimmy Buffett here all the time, but we don’t,” said the employee, who didn’t want to be named in print.

Down at the Maine Guide Fly Shop, Joanne Willard said the only Tigermania she’d witnessed as of midafternoon was due to the media siege that took place Wednesday.

And as far as she could figure, nobody was talking about Tiger much at all.

“It’s only what you guys are creating,” she said with a laugh.

But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t willing to have some fun with the idea of a Tiger-at-large – at the expense of the visiting media.

For 20 minutes, Willard said she knew nothing about Woods. She said she hoped he’d walk in. And she didn’t think she had anything to say that would fit into a story about Tiger-hunting.

But when one customer at the busy shop on Greenville’s main drag asked where he could find the shop’s owner – popular guide Danny Legere – she seized her opportunity to deliver a jab.

“He’s out guiding Tiger Woods,” she joked to a loud chorus of laughs.

One fisherman who bought a license in the shop said he had heard the rumors about Woods before he even arrived in Greenville.

“We stopped down in Monson at the bakery and the girl told us the word is that Tiger’s in town,” said Jim Ancona of Boylston, Mass.

Ancona said he didn’t figure he’d see much of Woods during his stay … even if the golfer was somewhere near Moosehead.

“He’s the most recognizable athlete in the world, so I’m sure the chance of running into him on the street are quite slim,” Ancona said.

Still, Ancona held out hopes of spotting a Tiger in the golfer’s newest chosen habitat: a fly-fishing river.

“Maybe I’ll run into him up at East Outlet, fishing,” he said.

Among those who heard they might get a call from Woods was Marshall Peterson, who runs the Mount Kineo Golf Course with his wife, Lynn Tinsley.

“The word was that he was going to golf here or Squaw, but we haven’t heard anything,” Peterson said.

“If he came out here, I’d die.”

Peterson said Tinsley was hoping for Tiger to visit.

“My wife was dressed up and ready to go, but he never showed up,” he said with a laugh.

Another eyewitness?

So, was Tiger in town Wednesday and Thursday, or did the Bangor misunderstanding and subsequent radio reports unleash a flood of fishing tales?

Only Tiger knows for sure.

But Warden Lt. Pat Dorian has his own ideas. After all, he’s the guy who actually saw Woods during the middle of the morning Wednesday, just as the stories started sailing around like well-directed flies on the end of a tapered leader.

Maybe.

“I was going back to the office, and I met a real fancy SUV with a real pretty blond lady driving and a … gentleman looking like him,” Dorian said.

“It just struck me as odd, and hearing he’s in town, I put two and two together.”

And got a Tiger. But Dorian’s a veteran. He knows how fish tales work. And he’s not quite sure that the man he saw in that fancy SUV was actually, really, 100 percent-positively Eldrick “Tiger” Woods.

But it might have been. Maybe.

“Now maybe it’s not him,” Dorian said. “He didn’t come in and shake my hand or nothing, or ask for my autograph.”

Dorian, does know one thing, though. It’s something that anyone tailing the tale of a Tiger’s trail will find out eventually. And this is the one honest-to-goodness thing that’s really perfectly clear.

“If he’s [here], he’s probably keeping hid,” Dorian said.

No maybes about that.