I personally think there are more "top anglers" about now than there has ever been. I guess it's harder to stand out like Tel did, when there are now many anglers with abilities comparable to Tel. You look at the likes of Tom Stokes, Scott Lloyd, Greg Ellis, Myles Gibson, Si Kenny, Marcus Clark.... every year they're catching what they set out to catch. You add the old hats to that list; Dave Lane, Jim Shelley etc etc, and it starts looking like a pretty big list.
There are always a bunch of guys way under the radar too. Loads of exceptional anglers about nowadays imo.