Thirty five years ago (cripes!), I began researching for a book called The Great Anglers, which was published in 1990 to a modicum of acclaim.

I went way back to Walton and earlier, but concentrated on the 19th and 20th centuries. There were so many angling heroes that my problem was who to leave out, rather than finding names with which to fill the book.

As you’d expect, there were some mighty names of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods when angling seemed to explode in popularity and knowledge. JW Martin, Halford and Skues and many, many more took the sport to unimagined heights, but where I was especially fortunate was with that group of angling Titans born between the Wars or thereabouts. Older readers will warm to names like Richard Walker, Bernard Venables, Fred Taylor, Fred Buller, Peter Stone, Bob Church, Arthur Oglesby, Frank Guttfield, Benny Ashurst, Billy Lane, Dermot Wilson and even dear John Wilson, who just about fits that time span. Hugh Falkus was especially generous to me and in large part encouraged me to face life as a freelance writer having just escaped the security of a teaching life at Norwich School.

All these anglers, and many more that space considerations won’t permit, possessed extraordinary ability and had in most cases driven fishing forward with their brilliance. But they were also considerable men - and women - who had led rich and frequently dramatic lives - Walker, for example, navigating aircraft over Germany in the second war.

In those days I wrote letters begging for interviews and in every single case received warm and generous replies. Not a single 'hero' failed to inspire and in many cases I was welcomed in and became a friend of anglers I had worshipped from afar since childhood. In the intervening years, pretty well all have passed, but I will always remember and try to copy their kindness and humility and become a better person than I was before our meetings. So, in compiling that book, I learned a lot about fishing, but perhaps more about life and how to live it.

But suppose I or some other younger writer took on the Great Angler writing challenge today? How thick would the modern version actually be, I wonder? Chris Yates, one-time record carp holder, is still hale, hearty and fishing with aplomb. He, along with David Profumo and Charles Rangeley Wilson, is also writing beautifully about the sport. Stuart Croft is probably the modern equal of any fly angler who has ever fished. Dear Jeremy Wade has kept the spirit of adventure alive, both in words and film, and Terry Hearn is in my eyes the most empathetic carp angler of any age. Andrew Field, Ian Lewis and Paul Cook keep the artistic angle flowing and there are several champions in the field of conservation. This formidable gang, and a few others I apologise for overlooking, would be important in any age, but they wouldn’t make a book now. So. Where have  all the Great Anglers gone?

Perhaps there is little left in angling still to invent and perhaps we have discovered just about all there is to know. But I doubt it. I fear we have become stereotyped and lazy and simply tread the same old paths to the riverbank in our blinkered, incurious way.

I blame commercial fisheries that are too easy and sap the old ways of angling apprenticeship that tyros used to endure. Today’s anglers know no hard knocks or runs of blanks because they start at the top in waters heaving with hungry fish.

I also blame the curse of specialisation that ruined the broad vision of angling from the 80s or thereabouts. Buller, Wilson, Walker and many more were skilled at every branch of what we do, but now modern divisions limit us and pigeonhole us and our abilities dwindle. Perhaps fishing has few unexplored challenges left within it, especially post-internet, and perhaps the decline of river fishing has forced us onto stupidly overstocked still waters, but the result still stands… anglers are nowhere near as multi-talented as they were a century ago.

Perhaps I am not giving young super stars like Josh Fisher, Robbie Northman and Alan Blair their due. Probably I’m just a boring old fart looking at the past with longing and at the present with jaundiced eyes. But, to be honest and objective, I don’t think I am. Who would YOU have fishing for your life? Richard Walker and John Wilson or an angler whose claim to fame is catching a ton of carp before lunch in a pond of an acre and deep as a duck?