Well, it’s a propaganda film, but it’s not like John Doe is showing you how he built his rod — this is Sage, and here we’re in a whole different league from John’s rod, even if for John, his rod is the best in the world, and for good reason: he made it for his hands and with his hands, John.
And at Sage, it’s a bit like John’s rod — they’re designed with love, by hand, and it’s by hand that they were tested, and it’s the tester’s hand that made the synapses of his brain connect, because that’s how we’re built, us humans : our hands send informations to our brain, which analyzes it based on what it knows, its history, what it has experienced, what it feels as pleasure, and how to adjust precision. So look at all the hands, the expertise and the experience of those who make these rods.
The rod is a really particular tool — it’s all about feel, a fusion of informations, a natural ease or a constraint that will need to be minimized. The first fly rod I bought, I knew nothing about it, I had never held a fly rod in my hands — for about twenty years I had only fished ultralight. And the saleswoman at that fly shop in San Francisco whose door I had pushed open listened to me, had me ‘try out’ rods even though I knew nothing, but she understood my way of fishing and my feel for it. I walked out of the shop, proud as a peacock, with a Sage rod-and-reel combo. A Graphite, 9′ #5, 4-piece. A beginner’s rod that suited me, and we tamed each other during those first years. It felt right in my hand. Or at least my hand was going to adapt to it. Later, it was at the fly fishing club that I progressed — hours of casting, dozens of rods tried. And then reservoir fishing was all the rage; you couldn’t fish anywhere else in the Paris region in winter. And that’s when I discovered an incredible rod for the time — the Sage RPL 9’6 #8, 2-piece, a rocket that let you dream of casting your fly all the way to ‘the far bank’… then came the RPL+, and I had found my rod, a Sage that fit MY hand. Though for the 4-weight line, the LL suited me, while the ONE suited me for the 5-weight… and, more than 20 years later, the LL is still MY rod, and the ONE — I’ve been hauling it around with me for 15 years! In short, with a rod, the most important thing is that it fits YOUR hand!