Sakura Ryokan 902MH 9' 9-35g lure rod review - under £100

Back in the day when I was obsessing about Conoflex beachcasters and Daiwa SLOSH multipliers, I have vague memories of picking up a few “spinning rods” around the £100 mark and under. From time to time I would take one in my rod quiver to chuck something metal around while we waited for dark on the bait rods, but for the life of me I can’t remember actively liking any of those floppy spinning rods back then………….

So we take something SO different and modern like this Sakura Ryokan 902MH 9' 9-35g lure rod which is on my affiliate links is precisely £94.99 at the time of writing this review at the end of May 2025. I am never quite sure what to refer to as “budget” these days when every single thing in life is getting more expensive, but with how much a fair number of anglers seem relatively comfortable dropping on a modern lure fishing rod these days, I think it’s okay to refer to a lure rod under £100 as the more budget option. Some anglers will not spend a lot of money on a fishing rod, and a lot of anglers simply can’t afford to. We all lead different lives and we all have different amounts of money we can allow to fall upon our hobbies, sports and pastimes. I work in fishing and a lot of the fishing tackle I use I don’t pay for via my consultancy work with Pure Fishing/Savage Gear, but unless I am hopelessly out of touch I would hope that most anglers looking for a lure rod could drop this sort of money on one if push came to shove.

The simple fact is that these days you can buy a truly proper lure fishing rod for £100 and under if you get the right one - and this Sakura Ryokan 902MH 9' 9-35g lure rod is one of those. I’d prefer a shorter handle length but I can easily live with it. Think back a few years and there was no way you would be getting decent guides on a rod like this, so to see Fuji Concept anti-tangle K-guides on this Sakura rod is pretty amazing. I don’t believe the reel seat is a Fuji, but I really like it with that bit of duplon where the back of my rod-hand naturally sits on the rod. For sure it’s not the lightest 9’ lure rod out there, but at 155g it’s not remotely heavy either, and I like how the rod feels as good to me with a Penn Slammer IV 2500 spinning reel on it as it does with something like a smaller and lighter Shimano Stradic 2500 or C3000. Yep, we’re getting a proper lure fishing rod here, much like that Favorite X1.1 902MH 9' 12-36g lure rod (review here) which impressed me so much last year but which I am struggling to find in stock at the moment (lots of different models in the X1.1 range here).

The 9-35g rating on this Sakura Ryokan 902MH rod covers so much of the lure fishing we might do in saltwater in the UK or Ireland, but this rod feels far more comfortable to me when you’re fishing with lures of say 15g and upwards towards that 35g top end. I have no doubt you could push this rod to 40g if required, but I haven’t done so. I am guessing it’s what you can and cannot put into a rod at this price that reflects how much better it performs with the heavier lures, but that’s no worries to me when I think about the bass lures I tend to fish with on the open coast especially. Step up another £50 or so to a rod like our awesome Savage Gear Defiance SG4 9’ 9-35g or the truly outstanding Favorite Totem 902MH 9' 12-36g lure rod (review to come) and now you’re getting lure rods which truly are comfortable with the lighter lures, but they are half as expensive again.

So it’s no complaints at all from me. For £94.99 at the time of writing I can buy a really rather lovely lure rod which I know will fish most of the soft and hard lures I might use for a lot of my bass fishing from the shore. I feel supremely confident pushing this Sakura Ryokan 902MH 9' 9-35g lure rod hard, and in the cast it feels sharp and fast, with no hint of trying to tell me off if I mistime a cast. I know that I am holding the rear grip slightly up from the end of it as you can see in the photo above, but I also know that many anglers prefer a longer handle length to me anyway. I think this rod is happiest as a “whack and crank” style of lure rod, in that it loves casting and retrieving lures with a bit of weight on them, or working something like the Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless along the bottom. You can seriously get the regular Xorus Patchinko out on this thing, and the tip works the lure well at range. Now I clip on something like a DoLive Stick on a 6/0 weedless hook and of course I can fish it, but I am losing some finesse in the overall feel when twitching the soft plastic around.

Which I completely expect on a rod at this price. Move up another £50 and it’s unavoidable what the extra money can buy you if you get the right rod, but we’re splitting hairs when we’ve got a sub-£100 lure rod here which is bloody good and will catch a hell of a lot of fish on a lot of different lures. I don’t know what £100 might buy us in another ten years, but at the going rate it won’t be that much! What I do know right now is that under £100 can get me a damn good lure fishing rod if I get the right one. This Sakura Ryokan 902MH 9' 9-35g lure rod is one of them. You all have a good weekend………….

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