Interested to see what this new sub-£150 Savage Gear SGS8 4000 spinning reel is like (I was nothing to do with its development so it’s brand new to me)

Yes I am doing a fair amount of work with Savage Gear these days, but I am absolutely nothing to do with any of their new spinning reels so I am in essentially the same boat as any of you here who might have a passing interest in them. I have recently been fishing a bit with a couple of the new Savage Gear SG8 spinning reels which aren’t technically designed for saltwater fishing but then neither are some of the many other reels we might use - don’t drown them, wash them down after use, what’s the problem? Now though there are these new SGS (Savage Gear Salt) spinning reels and I have what is currently the smallest model here for a bit of a thrashing, the SGS8 4000 version which weighs 333g loaded up with braid…………….

So I’m interested to see what this roughly £140 SGS8 4000 spinning reel might be like for the kind of lure fishing I do. The reel has just appeared on the market so it’s not as if I go finding anything wrong with it that stuff will be changed before going on sale. I wasn’t a part of that process, but I have been privy to a lot of the reports from European anglers who have been catching a lot of big fish on these reels, but with the photos I have seen it looks to have been mainly boat fishing. I obviously want to know how this new SGS8 4000 might hold up to the sort of shore based lure fishing that so many of us do here.

I have become more recently privy to future plans with Savage Gear spinning reels and there is a lot of exciting stuff going on. As I said I’ve been nothing to do with any of it so far, but things are changing and the bass fishing voice as such is becoming stronger. It probably goes without saying that if I could have influenced Savage Gear’s new spinning reel projects I’d have asked for a SGS8 size 3000 reel (looks to me like Savage Gear adopted the Shimano spinning reel sizes which makes life easier for somebody like me), but let’s see what happens in the future and I mustn’t go getting myself into trouble from saying too much! I have another very interesting spinning reel here which I can’t say anything about yet but, if it works as intended, is potentially a fascinating bit of kit.

Anyway, so we’ve got this brand new £140 SGS8 4000 spinning reel which as I said weighs 333g loaded up with braid, and this is what Savage Gear is saying about them: “SGS8 Tough saltwater fishing environments demand tough fishing tackle. So, how about a reel with a unique coating that easily withstood 500 hours of being sprayed with saltwater in testing? That’s our new SGS8, complete with SW500 coating. The reel is saltwater resistant in other ways too, including its sealed 8+1 steel ball bearings, sealed drag system and lightweight and strong aluminium body and Carbon Reinforced Composite rotor. Being able to withstand constant saltwater onslaughts isn’t this reel’s only quality, though. It also features our Friction Control System 3 drag system, which houses washers made in a three-layer design – a fibreglass layer with a carbon fibre layer on either side. This gives the washers unrivalled stiffness resulting in an ultra-smooth and powerful, fish-stopping drag – it also means they can be flipped over and used on either side to extend their lifespan”.

That all sounds good to me, but you and I both know that it’s also sort of just words out in the real fishing world. This “unique coating” sounds interesting but in reality I’m going to hose the reel down in freshwater after use and what interests me far more is what is going on inside the reel and whether it will stand up to endless casting and retrieving of lures. Any bass I might catch on this reel aren’t going to remotely test the drag or overall strength of it - come on, we need to be honest, we love our bass, but they are bass and not AJs or tuna etc. - so I know it’s going to come down to how smooth this SGS8 4000 remains or doesn’t remain to fish with as I get to use it more and more. What will also be very important is line management - how the reel behaves with modern braids when casting lighter lures into headwinds especially.

So where does this new spinning reel intended for saltwater use sit in the family tree as such of the gear that many of us know and perhaps use for our own fishing? The most obvious comparison to me is the Penn Spinfisher VI range, and with how these Savage Gear reels have adopted what looks to me like the Shimano spinning reel sizings, I’m looking at the SGS8 4000 against the very good and similar priced Spinfisher VI 3500 (359g loaded with braid). I am not getting an IPX5 rating (Ingress Protection) on the SGS8 like I get on the Spinfisher VI, but I will be putting this SGS8 4000 through exactly what I’d do with the Spinfisher VI so let’s see how it holds up. It’ll get a bit of lighter surf fishing where I don’t expect to drown it like I would the Slammer, but otherwise I will give it a good workout wherever I’d expect to use a 4000 or C5000 size Shimano or equivalent Daiwa.

I would imagine that the spinning reel people at Savage Gear have also looked at the Daiwa BG spinning reels and so on. You need to bear in mind that the UK is but one relatively small fishing tackle market on a global scale, and a sector such as the (boat based) inshore saltwater market in the US is massive. I’d have preferred this SGS8 4000 to weigh a bit less than 333g loaded up with braid, and especially when I am not getting what the brand new, heavier, and similar size, on sale fairly soon I believe Penn Slammer IV 3500 (411g loaded with braid) can do with its IPX6 rating, but if I went digging around through the development process at Savage Gear HQ I would imagine that lighter lure anglers wanting to cast said reel from the shore all day long on lightweight lure rods wasn’t that high on the agenda. As I said above though, things are changing on that front.

But you also know from my banging on about the Penn Slammer range especially that I don’t remotely obsess about uber-lightweight spinning reels, indeed I happen to think that a lot of this talk of “so and so set up not feeling quite right” is because some spinning reels are so ridiculously light now they can sometimes mess the balance of an outfit up. I can’t go out fishing at the moment as I blogged about on Monday, but when I strap this SGS8 4000 reel to a 9’ or 9’6’’ lure rod here at home it feels just fine to me, indeed initial impressions are that it looks like a lot of reel for the money. The proof will be in the eating though, and I need to get this brand new SGS8 4000 reel out fishing in the real world. The line lay looks fine, I note with interest how the handle looks and feels like a black coloured version of the gold coloured aluminium Penn Slammer handle, when you turn the handle on this SGS8 4000 it obviously feels nice and smooth because it’s straight out of the box and damn well should, and yes, I make no excuses for the fact that my work with Savage Gear has given me added interest in how this new SGS8 4000 reel might work out. Nobody at Savage Gear HQ has asked me to write this blog post or do a review or do anything other than give them feedback, but because I do this blog I thought I’d let you kind people know where I am at with this new reel. As always I will keep you posted. Roll on midnight on Thursday when my isolation ends!

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