Yes, yes, I know you’re probably fed up with it, but brace yourself and, if you can, look again at that picture of Vladimir Putin, topless. It purports, you’ll remember, to show the Russian President fishing on the Yenisei River in Siberia. The photograph was first printed in The Times on August 14 and since then has been published around the world.

It has had the White House and Downing Street in a tizz. My colleague Michael Gove, not entirely without his tongue in his cheek, described the circulation of such a picture as a “menacing gesture”. He said that Putin baring his pecs was “an audacious demonstration of political self-confidence”. Could Dick Cheney and Des Browne, he agonised, stand up torso-wise to such psychological pressure? Well, it is not every day that I am called upon to steady the nerves of the Western democracies, but they do come around from time to time and this is clearly one of them.

Every angler from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Shanklin, Isle of Wight, knows that this image is more of a problem for Russia than for the rest of us. They can see at a glance that here is a picture of a non-fisherman or an inept fisherman: of Putin as a poseur; of the Russian as a man who, even as he is courting the world’s attention, cannot get the important things right.

Such as his rod-grip. How, anglers are chorusing, can any man who stands muscle-clenched – and who holds his rod behind the reel – have any serious hope of catching a snag, never mind of challenging the military might of the United States, of blackmailing Western Europe over its gas supplies or of staking a credible claim to the Arctic? Even a tyro knows that a long rod loaded with a fixed-spool reel needs to be gripped in a relaxed manner, with the palm of the hand directly above the reel seat and with the fingers curled around the dropped stem beneath it.

My seven-year-old granddaughter, Iliana, who, by way of credentials, recently caught a bagful of gudgeon and perch on her first outing with yours truly, could tell Putin that a rod held with the weight of the reel forward, as shown, would put an intolerable strain on the wrist and make casting impossible.

She could have told the flunkies who suggested this picture that in addition to holding the rod in the manner described, their leader should have had the rod-handle running along the underside of his forearm, where the weight could be supported. She would have added that only the most naff of anglers fails to remove the plastic sheath – note the soft, linear gleam – that protects a new rod’s handle.

So no, unless Russia’s best-known martial arts expert is using the rod as some novel kind of muscle-toning device – or possibly is sending a signal by some secret rod-grip known only to the KGB or maybe the masons – this picture, against all propaganda intent, is an appalling PR gaffe and a gift to the West in what it reveals. The advisers who set it up – clearly the same calibre of expert who puts fly reels on spinning rods in lifestyle advertisements and who, in television commercials, shows “salmon anglers” fishing with roach poles – should be shot.

Which, in the present case, they possibly have been.

What a contrast it all is to the Americans. They are so PR-savvy and rod-grip alert. They rumbled long ago that a picture of a President with the correct grip on his rod sends a message that here is a man with a grip on events. They go to enormous lengths to ensure that every new President gets it right. Everyone knows that no sooner is the presidential oath taken than the new man is whisked away for briefings on the true state of the American economy, for presentations on strategic foreign policy issues and to undergo intensive body-stance and rod-grip training.

Some Presidents, realising what is at stake, have taken up fishing to stay in practice. Grover Cleveland was an angler. Likewise Dwight D. Eisenhower. The disabled Franklin D. Roosevelt was keen enough to have special fishing seats fixed into his boat. Jimmy Carter, an enthusiastic fly-fisherman, wrote to my American publisher – yes, honestly, and on a White House letterhead, at that – saying nice things about a new book of mine on the subject newly out in the United States, so he clearly knew more than most about the subject.

Herbert Hoover once observed that “all men are equal before fish”, a truth instantly recognised by rodders everywhere and at a stroke that harnessed angler power throughout the West.

This, though, is not entirely a one-sided match. The fact that Putin could beat President Bush at fishing despite the way he holds his rod – the Russian leader caught a 30in bass on his recent Kennebunkport outing while Bush blanked – speaks volumes, some might think, about the US head of state, intensive training or no intensive training. It sends comforting messages back to Moscow and Iran, offsetting the Russian’s hand-grip gaffe.

But stay tuned on this one. Next month the scales in this geopolitical game will swing back to the West. In that piece I plan to return to the plastic wrapping left on the rod handle and to its quisling gleam. I intend to reveal what it says about the cohesiveness of the Russian leadership and about Moscow’s relationships with China and North Korea. That article is scheduled for October 1. If it fails to appear, those possible grip signals to the KGB may be to blame, and check out my keyboard for Polonium 210.

— Brian Clarke’s fishing column appears on the first Monday of each month

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