No, of course not. Please read properly the lines that you quoted. I used the word 'subconsciously' and I was trying to describe my instinctive feelings, not to make any such dogmatic statement.Julian wrote:So are you saying that until an angler is dead he can't have a sort of 'legendary' status?
You appear to be trying to misrepresent me to make it appear that I'm mounting some sort of attack on Mr Yates. I've already made it quite clear that I'm an admirer of Chris Yates and the idea that I've compared him to those earlier anglers in any unfavourable light is purely your fiction - you didn't find it in any of my posts.Julian wrote:If that is so then I have to totally disagree, because whilst there is no doubt in my mind as to the importance of and status of the likes of Walker and Venables, in my opinion, Chris Yates is at least equal to them - because of his influence on my own ( and many others) angling life, direction, experience and success.
The point about Venables, Walker and earlier anglers is that they are all, now, firmly in the past: on the one hand, the supply of items of tackle genuinely connected with them is finite - there are never going to be any more of them and, with the inevitable mischances attendant on the passing of time, the numbers are going to dwindle; on the other hand, owning an item that belonged to them is a connection to the past and to the history of our sport. While Chris Yates, in my opinion, has or will have an important place in the history of angling, he's not 'history' yet - he's still out there fishing and I can't see any particular significance in some old rod that - and this is a hypothetical example - he bought, had refurbished, used for a few months, decided didn't suit him, and sold on. But such a rod would fetch a multiple of its 'non-Yates' value. As I said in earlier posts, this bemuses me a little.
