Having been in the fly fishing industray for almoost 45 years I have to say there are a lot of great fisherman that no one knows. I can name at least 8 Guides in my area that on any given day will out fish 80 percent of the people being named on this list.
People tend to name fly fishermen that have names made in books or on TV but there are a lot of great fishermen out there that go unnamed. Shame to as they are so much better than a lot of those known in this sport.
How good is a person? Is he or she great if named by a fisherman or woman that isn't very good at the sport and is impressed by them because they read a story about them or watched them catch fish when the new fishermen or woman couldn't? Or are they good fisherman or woman that know what they are talking about? This all matters in answering these types of question's.
Over many years of guiding I was able to take out 5 or 6 good fly fishing writers of our sport. Out of those 5 or 6 two were what I would call good fishermen. The others could write well but they were just avarage fishermen in my book.
Like I said it matters who is doing the picking. Ron