Peter McKean (1942 - 2016)

Peter McKean

Peter McKean made a significant contribution to contemporary Australian bamboo fly rod making from the late 1990s to his death in 2016. This is recognised with a memorial to him at Peter Hayes’ lodge ‘Hayes on Brumbys’ on the banks of Brumbys Creek near Cressy in Tasmania.

Peter’s first encounter with bamboo fly rods was in 1967, when he was given a choice between a Hardy Jet fibreglass rod and a Gillies bamboo Peter Pan, with the strong advice at the time that the Gillies would be the better buy. He kept the Gillies all his life and was happy to admit that the dealer in the fishing store was right.

Peter considered the Tasmanian climate and fishing opportunities eminently suitable for making and fishing with bamboo rods, for both river and still water fly fishing for wild Brown trout. He commissioned bamboo rod maker Tony Young to repair a Pape of Newcastle rod with 170 intermediate bindings.[1] Young obliged, but when Peter had commissioned three bamboo fly rods from him, Young convinced Peter to “have a go” at making his own bamboo rods from scratch. 

Peter posted this autobiographical sketch on https://www.bamboorodmaking.com/index.html, to which he posted almost 200 times:

“I had gone through the plastics phase and come out the other side relatively unscathed, and returned to bamboo when I bought a copy of the Carmichael/Garrison book[2] as a gift for my father-in-law – between the book and the unstinting help of a rod maker on the other side of the continent, Tony Young, I battled on through a few disastrous rods; and about that time, I found The List.”[3]

Australasian rod maker Nick Taransky sent us this biographical sketch of Peter:

“My understanding is that Peter began making rods in the mid to late 1990s. He had a local Launceston machinist make up his steel planing forms. His workshop was at the back of his house, looking over the garden.

“While his veterinary practice kept him busy, even into ‘semi-retirement’, continuing to work at the practice after selling it, he seemed to manage quite a prolific output of rods, and always had a few on the bench when we spoke.

“Peter made rods from a wide range of tapers and was never afraid to experiment with something new. But he had a great deal of respect for the tapers of Jim Payne. He made quite a few rods based on the 7ft #4/5 Payne 98, and probably most of all on the 7’6” #5 Payne 101.[4] He ‘tweaked’ both a little to further tighten the tip and beef up the butt. I also recall a 6’ #3 of which he made several, but don’t remember the taper’s origins.

“Sometimes Peter would use figured wood for reel seats, and other rod embellishments, but most of his rods featured a simple but elegant Garrison-style hooded cap and ring seat with a cork spacer. Reel seat hardware and ferrules were usually blued.

“Most of all I remember Peter for his overwhelming generosity in sharing his rod making knowledge. With established makers like me he was always ready to offer his thoughts, always in a non-authoritarian way. He gave up a great deal of time helping beginners, including giving away culms of bamboo to help them get started. He was also quite a prolific contributor to online rod making forums, in particular the Rodmakers’ List-serv site, a pre-Web email-based forum.”

The McKean Rods

We have been able to find images of four examples of Peter’s rods, all made on commission:

·      The Currango Special, a blonde 7’6” 3-piece with spare tip, weight 4.5 oz, for a #5 line, made in 2006, based on a taper by Harold ‘Pinky’ Gillum (1896-1966).

·      The St Patrick's Rod, a 6'3" unflamed 2-piece with spare tip for #3 line, made in 2010, taper unknown but possibly based on the Paul Young Midge taper.

·      The Macquarie, a 7’6” flamed 2-piece with spare tip, weight 4.75 oz, for a #5 line, made in 2006, possibly based on the Payne 101 taper. (made for D.K. Wall)

·      The Meander, a flamed 7’3” 3-piece, weight 5.2 oz, for a #5 line, made in 2013, taper unknown, but possibly based on the Paul Young Driggs River.

[1] It would have been a substantial rod – the only ones we could find online were a 10’3” and a 11 ft 3-piece.

[2] A Master’s Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod, Garrison and Carmichael, Martha’s Glen Publishing, 1977.

[3] The Rodmakers’ List-Serv site was an invaluable medium for information sharing by email for cane rod makers throughout the world. Peter was a prodigious contributor. Browsing the Rodmasters’ Archive at https://www.hexrod.net/RMA/index.html reveals that between April 2000 when he joined and October 2004 when the site closed, Peter posted over 630 times, by far the largest contributor. There are many gems among his posts, well worth mining. https://www.bamboorodmaking.com/index.html appears to have succeeded it and contains a link to the Rodmasters’ Archive.

[4] Peter posted this gem on 3 September 2001: “I will never make another rod over 8’0", nor preferably over 5-weight, though I would think about a parabolic 6 weight. It’s a very subjective thing, I know, but to me the big area in which the bamboo rods shine is in 3,4 & 5 weights between 6’0” and 8’0"; they can be either fast or slow according to preference. I think that a 7’6” 5 weight Jim Payne is the rod that God made the bamboo expressly to build! And in my opinion, He fishes one as well!” 

McKean Currango  Special 7'6" 3/2 #5

Mc Kean The St Patrick's Rod 6'3" #3