J. M. Gillies (1900 - 1977)

J M Gilles Great Lake casting the Peter Pan bamboo fly rod

JM Gillies (1900-1977)

John Malcolm Gillies was born in Melbourne in 1900. The website of the Australian Fly Fishing Museum[1] records that: 

“He was a major creative and commercial influence in Australian fly fishing in the 1930s and early post-war years.

“Though a Victorian, Gillies was strongly focused on Tasmania. He mainly fished the lakes of the central plateau, encouraged by Launceston car dealer Doug Hollis, for whom he worked from 1925 to 1928. At the onset of the Great Depression, he returned to Melbourne. After making some rods and flies for friends, he decided to make it his full-time work. He set up business from a workroom in his parents’ residence in the grounds of the University of Melbourne, where his Scottish father was a Professor at Ormond Theological Hall. In 1933 he married Jeanne Fawkner of Launceston.

“Gillies’ rods were mainly powerful and fast-actioned, to cope with Tasmania’s high-country wind. His energy-efficient casting technique was based on the same ‘vee-grip’ hand position he used as a scratch golfer. This distinctive influence is still felt today among some top Australian tournament casters and fly fishers. Gillies himself won a number of distance and accuracy events at state and national level. 

“As well as his rods, Gillies designed fly reels and had them made in England. With the aid of three assistants, he also made and sold many flies, both standard and his own invention. The most famous were his beetles, evolved when the Great Lake rainbow trout fishery was at its peak, and his Penstock Brown, an imitation of the mayfly species then dominant at Penstock Lagoon. His elegant early tackle catalogues are now highly valued collectors’ items.

“J.M. Gillies became a proprietary company after World War II and shifted emphasis from manufacturing to importing. Malcolm Gillies sold the firm on his retirement to Tasmania in the early 1960s, but as J.M. Gillies Agencies it remains a major player in the fishing tackle business.”

Gillies contributed four coloured plates of flies to McCausland’s Fly Fishing in Australia and New Zealand, as well as a chapter on Tasmania’s Great Lake Beetle.

In The Country for an Angler, A History of the Victorian Fly-fishers’ Association, RA Brothers has a more extensive biography of Gillies:

“J. M. Gillies & Co began life in 1931 from the family residence in the grounds of Ormond College, University of Melbourne, where Malcolm’s father was Professor of New Testament Studies at Ormond Theological Hall. As described by Douglas Gillison in The Argus [of 10 October 1931]:

“Highland ancestry and many years of trout fishing led Mr J.M. Gillies into the way of the amateur craftsman. He built himself a rod and tied himself some flies. Then a friend discovered his skill and commissioned him to build another rod. Today, in his workroom overlooking the grounds of Ormond College, Mr Gillies and two trained assistants cater for those who follow the lure of the trout. On a bench at a window a large specimen case filled with imitation flies, the points of the hooks buried in ridges of cork, lies open, and these flies are so delicately coloured and finely made as to give the impression that if disturbed, they might rise suddenly, and flit through the open window into the sunshine. Mr Gillies knows the wiles and foibles of the trout far too well to be lulled into a false security, so he devotes himself to a study of practical entomology. On a table before him are marked packets of feathers, the hackles of neck feathers and wing feathers of the rooster, the starling, the duck, the partridge, the jungle cock, and a variety of other birds, even the gay plumage of the peacock. He knows that the flies appear very differently to the human eye and to the eye of the trout…. The delicate work calls for the eye of an artist, for the colours of the natural insect must be matched in the feathers and silk with proper allowance for the changes wrought by oil dressing or water. Sometimes one of these nymphs, duns, spinners, nerve-winged or wasp-waisted insects is unlike any natural insect, but the designer and the tier know to what extent waterproof dressing will change the tones of the silk in a dry fly and water the colour and appearance of a wet fly.

“Later the business moved to the Argus building on the north-west corner of LaTrobe and Elizabeth Streets. In those days there were no dedicated fly tackle shops, and fishing gear was sold in department stores and hardware shops. It was a small market and Gillies relied largely on word of mouth for any business success. He stocked nothing but the very best available English and American tackle and soon built his business with a good selection of fly-fishers’ needs and luxuries, as his catalogue showed.

“As Hardy had the name ‘Palakona’ on its rods, Gillies adopted John Brookes’ suggestion that he name his rods ‘Tonkona’ (from Tonkin cane). They were fitted with down-locking reel seats: he disapproved of the butt sticking out to catch the line and perhaps lose a fish, as sometimes occurs with an up-locking fitting, and contended that they are inclined to come loose too easily. He omitted intermediate bindings as unnecessary and adding only extra weight. Rather than using a brush to spread the rod varnish, he used his finger to give a superior finish.

“In addition to building new rods, he renovated old ones, disassembling the bamboo sections and re-gluing them with more modern and superior glues, paying particular attention to the ferrules. He would reverse the reel seat to give the rod a new lease of life and finish it as if it were a new one.

“John Brookes, himself a casting champion, described Malcolm’s casting style as somewhat similar to Charles Ritz’s later ‘high back-cast/high line-speed’ technique, using fewer false casts and resulting in fewer wind knots in Tasmania’s ‘Roaring Forties’ conditions. He developed the rods to cope with these, otherwise the casting technique would have been wasted. Rather than casting ‘thumb on top’ he used a vee-grip[2] derived from golf, at which he was also highly skilled.

“In 1954 Malcolm Gillies made his last appearance in tournament fly casting, winning the Australian and later the Victorian Skish Fly Accuracy Championship and setting a new record of 85 out of a possible 100 points.

“Gillies supplied a legion of flies, mostly standards but some his own invention. Probably the most notable were the beetle series with clipped- hackle bodies, of which the Great Lake Beetle was the most famous, and the Penstock Brown, a dun designed specifically for the natural found on Penstock Lagoon.

“After World War II, he learned the value of Polaroid sunglasses for fishing and was the first to import them. He and his wife retired to Devonport in 1971 to be nearer to his treasured fishing spots.”[3]

Peter Wilson, writing about the early Australian makers in The Cast – From Cane to Carbon, writes that Gillies collaborated with Maurie Turville on the design of rod tapers and that Gillies imported cane rod blanks from the UK for himself and for on-selling to Turville. Gillies cooperated with Hardy Bros, making some rod blanks for Hardy, and they made some rods for him that he sold under the Gillies name. 

Gillies was a founding member of the Red Tag Fly Fishers’ Club, founded in 1932 at Box Hill in Victoria. Alongside Bill Southam, Theo Brunn, John Brookes, Reg Lyne and other renowned casters, Gillies was one of the main organisers of the early Australian Fly-Casting Championships. The first were held at Queenscliff Lagoon, Manly, in June 1951, the second in February 1952 at ‘Cora Lynne’ trout hatchery near Launceston, Tasmania. The third Championship was held in March 1953 at the Red Tag Fly Fishers’ Club’s newly built Brunn Fly Casting Pool at Yarra Bend Park, Fairfield in Melbourne.

Peter Wilson writes that Jack Myles, the 1957 Australian Fly-Casting Champion of Champions and Malcolm Gillies’ son-in-law, took over all Gillies’ rod making after World War II, and was making rods until 1975. John Rumpf, also an Australian Fly-Casting Champion of Champions, was also involved in rod making at Gillies,[4] including the modification of some existing Gillies tapers, for example to create a heavier tip for the Peter Pan for competition accuracy casting. 

Malcolm Gillies died in Tasmania in 1977.

The Gillies Fly Rods

In Fly Fishing in Australia and New Zealand, McCausland writes (in 1949): “Whilst the rods of J.M. Gillies may cost up to £25, remember that the best of our local makers’ products compare more than favourably with any of the imported rods, and you can hold your local man responsible if a fault develops, which is not always possible with the imported article…”

In Lifelong Pleasure – Seventy Years of Fly Fishing, the renowned fly fisherman and fly caster John Brookes (1922-2004), who fly fished the Tasmanian lakes under the tutorship of Gillies from age 13, mentions the following fly rods by Gillies: 

·      the Water Gypsy, a 9ft, 5.5 oz 3-piece he made for Brookes 

·      the Peter Pan No. 1 (9’6”, 3-piece, 6.75 oz) 

·      the Peter Pan No. 2 (9’3”, 3-piece, 6.25 oz)

·      the Robin Hood (9’10”, 7.75 oz; 9’6”, 7.25 oz) 

·      the JMG (9ft, 6 oz, 2-piece). 

In his ‘Australian Fishing Books’ column of Freshwater Fishing Australia Issue 180, Jim Findlay, Secretary of the Joseland Society, wrote about the J.M. Gillies catalogues, first issued in 1932 as the Trout Fishers’ Guide and revised in October 1933, 30 or so pages of rods, flies, fly tying materials and tools, and one Gillies reel, the J.M.G., in three sizes. Catalogue No. 40 was renamed RODS and TACKLE. 

The Trout Fishers’ Guide included the above listed Peter Pan (also offering a ‘double-built’ option that added a second layer of split cane strips), Robin Hood (“designed principally for the Great Lake, Tasmania”) and Water Gypsy (“a light, quick-actioned dry fly rod”), as well as the Rainbow, “a casting tool for anglers yet to be persuaded by the delights of the fly”. 

The Gillies Peter Pan No. 1 and No. 2, priced at £10/10/- in 1933, would cost about $1200 in today’s prices. Of interest is that the three Turville rods advertised in the Horsham Times on 21 August 1951 (see the page on Turville) were all priced at about £10, about $500 in today's prices. The Gillies rods were relatively expensive.

RODS and TACKLE included the Tom Thumb (“a very light rod of great power, with quick action which responds at once to the strike”), 8’9” 3-piece, two tips, 4.75 oz, and the Wizard (“designed to meet the requirements of anglers for all round fishing”), 3-piece, two tips, 9ft 6.5 oz and 9’6” 7.5 oz.

Jim Findlay kindly gave us permission to include his images of the Gillies catalogue covers and rod pages below.

Gillies Peter Pan  (AM)

c1938 Hardy Palakona 3 pce, 9'3" 6wt Gillies built

Gillies flies in McCausland’s Fly Fishing in Australia and New Zealand