So how do you go about developing a bunch of new lure fishing rods?

I linked to a new Savage Gear video on Facebook yesterday which is a short intro to the more expensive £300 range of Savage Gear SGS8 lure rods we have got coming out next month (video below, there is also an awesome £150 SGS5 range coming out, video and all details to come), and an angler asked me whether I would provide any insights into how a range of lure rods is developed. Here goes then, and please as always bear in mind that there are many ways to go about this kind of thing, plus the development of these new lure rods is the first time I have been able to get 100% involved from day one with making what are essentially my perfect lure fishing rods…………..

This project obviously came about from me pushing for Savage Gear to make some modern lure fishing rods that I wanted for my bass fishing. I had to come at this wanting to make lure rods that I really wanted to fish with, because as much a part of you wants to, you can’t try to make lure rods to suit everybody. For sure you hope that anglers will like them, but I have been lure fishing for bass for long enough now and of course tried and tested most likely more bass lure rods than anybody else in the UK - I know what I like and I know what I don’t like in a lure rod for bass fishing. By no means am I any more right or wrong in liking or disliking what I do than you, but I don’t think making fishing rods for a specialist sector of the market is about some kind of blanket design which in my mind would take away from what we were trying to achieve.

Way before the world came to a grinding halt I headed over to Denmark with a great big rod tube full of different lure rods which I wanted to show Mads Grosell of Savage Gear. I thought it was far better to actually show Mads the sort of rod actions I like and then explain why I like a rod to behave in a certain way and so on. We were starting from scratch and in that meeting we didn’t have any previous or current Savage Gear rods which some of you here might be using for your bass fishing and which to be perfectly honest I know very little about. Mads did want to show me some of their latest, high-end sea trout lure rods, and whilst I understand completely why they tend to be very fast and light and with what we would think of as soft tips - sea trout are very “jumpy” and are also masters at throwing hooks, the softer tips are there for better protecting the hook hold and not giving too much resistance to the fish when they hit the lure - I explained that it was not an action I was after at all for bass lure rods.

Mads and I had obviously talked a lot about these proposed bass rods before I headed over for that meeting in Denmark, but nothing beats actually handling and bending and casting a bunch of lure rods which I happen to really like for my bass fishing. There is no point in detailing the different rods I took over to show him, but if you read my rod reviews on here you can probably get a good idea which specific lure rods and types of lure rods I think work well for my fishing. Before anybody inclined towards a conspiracy theory jumps in, we weren’t trying to copy anything by the way, and I wanted Mads to be able to feel how different these rods were to his own sea trout rods. I also didn’t want to be referring back to any previous Savage Gear rods which firstly I didn’t know, and secondly we wanted to be starting from scratch.

I have never worked with anybody in the fishing tackle industry who “gets” tackle related stuff as quickly as this lad Mads Grosell. Seriously, it’s just brilliant to be able to work with somebody who is so open-minded and without ego, and who listens and understands but obviously has his own strong ideas and plans as well. I went to that main lure rod meeting in Denmark fully expecting Mads to say something along the lines of “bloody hell Henry, the sort of rods you want to make are going to be really difficult to do”, so you can imagine my surprise when a few waggles and bends later Mads smiles, laughs, and says “this is going to be so easy to do, I can see what you are after, these are far easier rods to design and make than our high-end sea trout rods”. Result!

So we were going back and forth about how certain rods bend and fish and behave on the cast or retrieve, or in the wind and rough seas and so on. We were refining our collective thoughts and ideas on what we like and don’t like, and when I head home it was now up to me to come up with the two ranges we had decided upon - what you will see as the £150 SGS5 and the £300 SGS8 ranges this June in shops and on various tackle websites, all details to come. We could have tried to be really clever and quirky and come up with some slightly strange rod lengths and casting weights, but what’s the point when many anglers own and use one lure rod and they need that rod to deal with their fishing? We have plenty of future plans with rods for sure, but for the time being I went for the most logical rods as I saw it, with one slight exception - our SGS8 9’2’’ 9-42g (it was good knowing you dear Genos, but our time together is over).

Mads understood enough about how I wanted these rods to perform to go to the sample stage, so I came back at him with my lengths and casting weights, and then it was a case of me waiting for Mads to do his thing with his people in China and for the resulting samples to turn up. Remember that this was way before Brexit and all the associated problems it has created for work like this, and in a surprisingly short space of time seven shiny new lure rods are in my possession and it’s time to see what I think. These were the first samples so the reel seats and guides were not as they were going to be on the finished products, indeed it was far more the case of whether I liked the actual blanks and how they fished. I will admit to a few nerves when I broke open that parcel of the first samples, but after a few waggles with each rod I was pretty bloody gobsmacked at how good they felt. It’s all very well talking and testing and planning, but until you get the actual fruit of your ideas in your hands you don’t really know how it’s going to go. I had already had an amazing experience making our Gravity Stick soft plastics with Mads, but this was fishing rods……………

Then it was a case of me heading out fishing and testing and casting all manner of different lures and types of lures on all seven rods. I knew immediately that the spacing of all the reel seats would need to be adjusted, and as amazed as I was by how good the first samples of the rods felt, a degree of tweaking was going to be needed to get to where I wanted them to be. My job was to start working out what changes I wanted, how to articulate those changes, and then how close each rod was to the casting weights I had initially suggested. A lot of different lures were cast and fished in all manner of conditions, using plenty of different spinning reels I might add, and a friend broke one of the sample rods when he was fishing with a big profile, heavy soft plastic and casting it hard into a breeze. I needed this kind of feedback for the next generation of samples, but interestingly I didn’t break a single rod myself, and that includes working out what I thought the correct casting ratings were and then deliberately overloading them by casting heavier lures as hard as I physically could again and again. Plenty of bass have been caught on all these different samples by a few different anglers as well. Perhaps that endless casting of heavier lures is why I got a dose of what I think was tennis-elbow a while back!

So all my thoughts and ideas go back to Mads and work commences on the next set of samples. Again this next set of rods was not going to be with the finished reel seats or guides, but the spacings of the reel seats were now correct when the new rods turned up, the guides were in the right places, the cosmetics were nearly perfect, and I was almost beyond amazed to be able to take all seven rods out again and again and find not one single thing about how any of them cast and fished that I wanted to change. I don’t know how quickly tackle companies are meant to arrive at a new range of rods the type of which they have never done before, but I couldn’t believe how we had managed to make what are my perfect lure fishing rods like this. A lot more real fishing time with all these new samples and I was able to go back to Mads and say yes, these are exactly what I was after when we first met and talked about doing Savage Gear lure rods. I had done the testing work required to be able to give the casting ratings which are now on the rods, I believe they are very accurate, and then I had to wait for the fully finished rods to turn up here at home and I’ve been fishing with them ever since.

This blog post obviously can’t show you just how much work has gone into these rods over a hell of a long time now. I would hope that me knowing what type of lure rod I like plus the ability to articulate that information, plus Mads’ expertise together with the people who then take all this and actually make the rods is how we have got to where are right now - about to launch two concise ranges of lure fishing rods which I am beyond proud of and also more than happy to state are essentially my perfect bass fishing rods for how I go about my bass fishing. Which is also how I hope a lot of other bass anglers go about it as well! I have no idea how these rods might sell once they are available, and if we fall flat on our faces then at least I’ve got a bunch of lure rods here which I rather like!

Perhaps what does it for me the most is how good we were able to make the £150 SGS5 range, and how close the three rods are to their siblings in the more expensive £300 SGS8 range (Fuji reel seats, Fuji Torzite guides, better grade of carbon, slightly lighter and “sharper”). If Savage Gear had said no to a £300 range of bass lure rods then I’d have still been jumping for joy at the SGS5 range alone, and whilst I don’t like trying to compare lure rods from different tackle companies and fishing rods are eternally personal things, I can count on one hand the specific lure rods up to genuinely £200+ that I have liked as much as our £150 SGS5 rods - and yes, I pushed really hard to get these rods out at these prices. I can’t make you believe what I say, I know that, but life’s too bloody short and fishing is too much fun for me to waste my time on here trying to blag it. If Savage Gear told me my services were no longer required later on today I’d be saying the same thing about all these lure rods. In due course I will tell you all about the individual rods and how I see them for our fishing, but I hope that was a bit of an insight into how these new rods came to be.