For me, there are several sorts of traditional fishing. One is using ancient tackle (or modern replicas) to fish ancient methods and see if they still work; another is using the kit I could have had as a boy if Mum and Dad had been Mater and Pater and in a position to spend a bit, and seeing how rubbish an angler I would have been then; this is my favourite, and I have a battery of 10'6" "Bottom Rods" with whole cane butt and middle joints and built-cane tips with which to play that game.
Then there's seeing what it was like for the toffs, using high-end cane that only became affordable after carbon drove glass down the market and cane almost vanished...and ebay came along...
But one factor that appeals and appals by turns is the reaction against the "Efficiency" counselled by Walker in the introduction to "Stillwater Angling"; does the enjoyment you get out of fishing depend solely on the size of the fish you catch? I can see how the float-fisher may be drawn in this direction, for he has eyes for nothing but his float, and is knackered from concentrating by the time he leaves, but the guy sitting behind a brace of sleepers on bleepers has plenty of time to enjoy his surroundings, botanising, birding and star-gazing to his heart's content, cooking and brewing-up on Kelly or Coleman and having a bit of a social life... yet some seem to spend muchof their time playing tech games in their bivvies... and some of both sets look so grim-faced in their trophy-shots in the papers that you can only wonder why they bothered to spoil a good camping trip by wasting time fishing.
Tradition angling is very much what you want it to be. If you have forked out a hundred quid for a Bazin "London Quill" float, you don't HAVE to risk it in the trees, you can fish just as traditionally with a crow-quill while it basks in its display cabinet... and it doesn't really matter a tuppenny dam' whether you use said crow-quill with a carbon whip or a Sowerbutt, the method is as traditional as it was in Walton's day (though Dame Juliana might have been impressed). You can collect old kit and just look at it, while fishing with replicas or modern equivalents, or buy "bargain" tackle and try to restore it and use that, you can fish bolt-rigs under a pair of Mk IV's, as long as some part of it harks back, in the angler's opinion, to a "better" time, he/you can call it Traditional and believe it.
IMHO, of course! ("Wink" emoticon here...the topic does raise some hackle in certain quarters!)