The core of what fishing consists of is mentioned briefly in a conversation taking place in the exceptional Lawrence Osborne’s latest novel, On Java Road.

An ageing Hong Kong grandee thinks it’s dumb, an English ex-pat journalist isn’t quite so sure and thinks there’s something of philosophy in what we do. After 60-plus years as an obsessive angler, I don’t know who to agree with. I thought I did once when I was convinced fishing was imbued with the widest range of cerebral considerations, but I look around me today and wonder if I had it all wrong. Perhaps fishing itself has changed. Perhaps I have changed, but much of what I see is dumbness all around.

I am lucky enough to have collected a library of perhaps a thousand fishing books dating back to Walton in the mid-17th century, but most were written between 1850 and the present day, although few published this century I find of much worth.

Since the 1990s, the tenor of angling writing has largely changed. There has generally been less on how water works, how fish behave and how an angler might relate to the aquatic world in general. At the same time, in both books and magazines, there has been far greater content concerning product, bait, rigs and the base line practical side of the sport. The rise of the internet has hastened this trend and in the coarse world especially writers and YouTube film makers have increasingly emphasised “gear” over “idea”.

Angling thought has become more one dimensional, if you like, a belief that new tackle or some wonder bait can solve any fishy problem. This is just plain dumb. It denies all the skills and subtleties that true angling demands and the philosophies of watercraft in its widest forms that writers pre-1980 thought were paramount.

Since the season opened on June 16, I have spent 54 days on some five rivers, walking, watching and, occasionally, fishing. And, my, have I seen some dumbness! I’ll give one example out of many to illustrate my point. This is how it happened two weeks ago on a startlingly low, clear river on a day of blazing sunshine.

I was hidden in young willows watching a run of fast, shallow water racing over gravels. There were six, perhaps seven, good chub in front of me enjoying the increased oxygen and lower water temperatures the riffle was providing them. Two blokes hove into sight, oblivious of me, sweating under a mountain of gear which they dropped noisily on the bank. They crunched around a while, hammered in their rod rests and set up rods with monstrous feeder rigs attached. Three chub had already scarpered and when those plastic bombs cannoned in, the remainder followed. Within 20 minutes, our maestros had emptied the swim entirely and unsurprisingly, they caught precisely nothing. Nine hours later, in the hotel bar, they blamed the river, the heat, the sun, Putin, inflation, just about everything but their own dumbness.

I’m not being superior , just sad because I’m old enough to remember when rivers were fished right. In one book, published 1964, the author describes just such a hot weather river challenge... how he crept up, watched chub through binoculars until he had plotted their patrol routes and then strategised his method of attack. Rod, reel, line, hook and nothing more. He extracted a big black slug from under a bankside log and swung it underhand into the top of the run. By this stage he was almost on his stomach, but he could still see the slug trundle towards the biggest of the fish. He saw a big, white mouth open, the bait disappear and he waited, breathless, until the line pulled tight. At four pounds odd, that was a big chub for those days and after its release my writer went on his way, covering more water, seeking out more monsters through stealth, cunning and experienced watercraft. An approach to life itself, you might think, not just fishing.

Even a cursory study of angling literature shows that most authors have thought fishing has declined through their lifetimes one way or another so I might just be following in a grand tradition of old fuddy duddies. But I don’t think so.

Mid-last century, you could go on any of our rivers and see true masters at work. Wilson. Hendry. Houseago and a hundred more. They’re all gone , replaced by one trick anglers in the main, inspired by nothing more than stereotypical nonsense they see on their screens.

“Dumb”, that’s what we anglers are in danger of becoming.