Lesson 6: The people behind the tapers

Bamboo School · Lesson 6 of 12

Hey there,

We've been talking about tapers as if they appeared on their own. They didn't. Each one belongs to a specific person who fished specific water and solved a specific problem. Six men. Roughly 180 combined years of building bamboo rods.

If you're casting a Headwaters rod, one of these names is marked on the blank. Here's who they were.

Jim Payne (1893–1970)

Probably the most revered American rodmaker in history. Took over his father's shop in 1922 and ran the E.F. Payne Rod Company out of Highland Mills, New York, for the rest of his life. Built fewer than 15,000 rods total. Every one numbered, every one signed.

Payne built for eastern dry-fly anglers on the Beaverkill and the Catskills. His 98 and 100 tapers are still the measuring stick for 7-foot and 7'6" trout rods, nearly a century after he drew them. A signed Payne rod today sells for $8,000 to $15,000.

Lyle Dickerson (1892–1981)

Michigan rodmaker who worked alone, one rod at a time. Dickerson built for western water: the Yellowstone, the Madison, the big rivers of Montana and Idaho. His tapers run faster and more powerful than most eastern work from the same period, because he was designing for wind, long casts, and larger fish.

He made about 3,000 rods in his career. A working Dickerson 8014 today brings $4,000 to $6,000 because so few were built and they still fish as well as anything made.

Paul Young (1890–1960)

Detroit rodmaker and the man who popularized the parabolic taper. Young believed the rod should flex all the way to the cork on every cast, and he designed a full line of rods around that principle. He wrote Making and Using the Fly Rod, still in print.

Young was a fisherman first, builder second. If a taper didn't fish well in his hands on the water, it didn't leave the shop.

Bill Phillipson (1902–1989)

Denver. Phillipson ran a production shop that turned out thousands of rods from the 1940s through the 1970s. He's the reason a lot of working anglers in the American west could afford real bamboo. His Peerless line was built to cast like a custom rod at a fraction of a custom price.

That's the spirit we try to carry forward. Phillipson proved you didn't need a handmade heirloom to fish bamboo well.

Goodwin Granger (1881–1931)

Also Denver. Granger ran his company for less than a decade before he died, but in that time he set the template for the western trout rod: longer, stronger, built to throw more line into more wind. The 8642 taper we still build is essentially Granger's vision of what a western rod should be. After his death the company continued, but the tapers that matter are the ones he drew.

Everett Garrison (1897–1975)

Garrison was an engineer by day and a rodmaker at night. He spent decades developing stress formulas for calculating tapers mathematically, designing the flex distribution on paper before cutting a single strip of cane. He built fewer than 700 rods in his life.

His book, A Master's Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod, is still the reference text for anyone who wants to understand the engineering behind bamboo construction. A fishing Garrison is among the most collectible bamboo rods in existence. His approach influenced nearly every serious rodmaker who came after him.

Next week: how to actually fish these rods. We'll start with the casting stroke, what bamboo requires that graphite doesn't, and move into matching the rod to your water.