What does “fish tale” mean in English?

A fish tale is a story that gets more exaggerated every time someone tells it — usually about how big a fish was. Fishers are famous for saying their catch was bigger than it really was, especially “the one that got away.” This clip, about a real 648-pound marlin with an official, record-breaking weight, is the opposite of a fish tale: proof, not exaggeration, because this fish was actually weighed.

You can call any unbelievable story a fish tale, even one with nothing to do with fishing: “That excuse sounds like a fish tale.” The idiom is American, and people often say it with a smile — it means someone is probably stretching the truth, not lying seriously. In the clip, the fish really was record-breaking: “they were told it set a record as the biggest fish ever weighed at Fisherman’s Landing” — a fish tale that, for once, checks out.