Dream Team
Meet Steve, Jerry, Don and Kerry. Among them, you're looking at nearly 100 years of fly rod design experience, not to mention more than their fair share of days on the water. As the Sage Design Team, they're the guys who've dedicated three years of their lives in developing our Xi2 Series rods. And while they may speak in terms usually reserved for aerospace engineers, it's easy to understand how excited they are about the Xi2.
With 50 years as a fly rod design pioneer under his belt, Don set the bar high: Build the finest saltwater fly rod in the world, period. Of course, that's easier said than done. The team decided they had to start from scratch, with the idea that every inch of a fly rod has different performance needs because it must accomplish different tasks. Since this kind of precise, inch-by-inch analysis had never been done before, Steve and Kerry had to put their heads together and invent an arsenal of new quantitative testing methods, machines and software.
Meanwhile, Jerry was hard at work defining the fishing and casting characteristics the new rod needed to have. He imagined a rod that could help anglers of all skill levels "put the fly closer to the fish" in a wide variety of situations. A rod that would allow an angler to concentrate on the fish instead of the cast. As he and Don began the design process, they determined that the secret lay in the ability to feel the line load, rather than the rod flex, throughout the casting stroke.
The only way to realize a high level of "line feel" was to radically reduce the swing weight of the rod itself. With this in mind, Steve, the material science guru, started testing a wide range of exotic materials, from quartz and titanium to the latest aerospace composites. Unsatisfied with the performance of these materials, the team went back into the lab and developed Generation 5 Technology, a completely new way of constructing rod blanks. By precisely placing different modulus strengths of graphite along the length of a given rod, the new Modulus Positioning System (MPS) proved to be the solution everyone was looking for.
With Generation 5 Technology in place , the team began to build and test literally hundreds of prototypes, searching for the correct MPS combinations that Jerry required. Of course, when fishability is how you judge a rod's performance, you have to fish. Jerry and a host of other anglers pushed these rods to their limits on the Outer Banks, the Keys, San Francisco Bay, Costa Rica and Christmas Island. They cast ridiculously big poppers into howling winds. Fought huge tarpon on wispy bonefish rods. And, yes, broke dozens of prototypes doing things that made guides cringe around the world. Along the way, improvements were made, flaws corrected and the Xi2 began to take shape. The result of this strenuous development process was, we admit, three years of fun, great memories and what we now believe are the finest saltwater fly rods in the world.
"These days, anglers expect more and ask more of their fly rods than ever before. What we used to do with six- and seven-weights, we now want to do with a four-weight. And casting styles have changed as well-today, anglers are driving or punching their casting stroke, and it's important to develop rods with this in mind. The Fli and Launch rods are my interpretation of actions that help the modern caster get the fly closer to the fish. Sure, these are fast-action rods, but what really sets them apart is their unmatched level of smoothness, which allows you to feel the rod load more easily and deliver the cast more naturally. That way, you can spend your time on the water fishing instead of messing around with your cast. Leave the hype and tall tales to the candidates; I'm a fisherman, and these are flat-out great fishing rods."
- Jerry Siem
"I'm extremely proud of the Fli and Launch Series rods, and I'm excited about how we designed and built them, too. We were able to apply a lot of what we learned in the development of Generation 5 Technology to create an unbelievably smooth power curve. Of course, it would have been easier to mass design and produce them in factories overseas, but that tends to give you a harsh rod that isn't very pleasant to fish with. Instead, we used the computer analysis program we created for G5 to maximize the performance of every inch of each Fli and Launch rod. We also used varying types of graphite according to the specific needs of each part of the rod, and held it together with an absolute state-of- the-art resin system. The result is a smoother, more efficient energy transfer during the cast, and a more effective fish-fighting tool as well. In other words, these are Sage rods."
- Don Green
With 50 years as a fly rod design pioneer under his belt, Don set the bar high: Build the finest saltwater fly rod in the world, period. Of course, that's easier said than done. The team decided they had to start from scratch, with the idea that every inch of a fly rod has different performance needs because it must accomplish different tasks. Since this kind of precise, inch-by-inch analysis had never been done before, Steve and Kerry had to put their heads together and invent an arsenal of new quantitative testing methods, machines and software.
Meanwhile, Jerry was hard at work defining the fishing and casting characteristics the new rod needed to have. He imagined a rod that could help anglers of all skill levels "put the fly closer to the fish" in a wide variety of situations. A rod that would allow an angler to concentrate on the fish instead of the cast. As he and Don began the design process, they determined that the secret lay in the ability to feel the line load, rather than the rod flex, throughout the casting stroke.
The only way to realize a high level of "line feel" was to radically reduce the swing weight of the rod itself. With this in mind, Steve, the material science guru, started testing a wide range of exotic materials, from quartz and titanium to the latest aerospace composites. Unsatisfied with the performance of these materials, the team went back into the lab and developed Generation 5 Technology, a completely new way of constructing rod blanks. By precisely placing different modulus strengths of graphite along the length of a given rod, the new Modulus Positioning System (MPS) proved to be the solution everyone was looking for.
With Generation 5 Technology in place , the team began to build and test literally hundreds of prototypes, searching for the correct MPS combinations that Jerry required. Of course, when fishability is how you judge a rod's performance, you have to fish. Jerry and a host of other anglers pushed these rods to their limits on the Outer Banks, the Keys, San Francisco Bay, Costa Rica and Christmas Island. They cast ridiculously big poppers into howling winds. Fought huge tarpon on wispy bonefish rods. And, yes, broke dozens of prototypes doing things that made guides cringe around the world. Along the way, improvements were made, flaws corrected and the Xi2 began to take shape. The result of this strenuous development process was, we admit, three years of fun, great memories and what we now believe are the finest saltwater fly rods in the world.
"These days, anglers expect more and ask more of their fly rods than ever before. What we used to do with six- and seven-weights, we now want to do with a four-weight. And casting styles have changed as well-today, anglers are driving or punching their casting stroke, and it's important to develop rods with this in mind. The Fli and Launch rods are my interpretation of actions that help the modern caster get the fly closer to the fish. Sure, these are fast-action rods, but what really sets them apart is their unmatched level of smoothness, which allows you to feel the rod load more easily and deliver the cast more naturally. That way, you can spend your time on the water fishing instead of messing around with your cast. Leave the hype and tall tales to the candidates; I'm a fisherman, and these are flat-out great fishing rods."
- Jerry Siem
"I'm extremely proud of the Fli and Launch Series rods, and I'm excited about how we designed and built them, too. We were able to apply a lot of what we learned in the development of Generation 5 Technology to create an unbelievably smooth power curve. Of course, it would have been easier to mass design and produce them in factories overseas, but that tends to give you a harsh rod that isn't very pleasant to fish with. Instead, we used the computer analysis program we created for G5 to maximize the performance of every inch of each Fli and Launch rod. We also used varying types of graphite according to the specific needs of each part of the rod, and held it together with an absolute state-of- the-art resin system. The result is a smoother, more efficient energy transfer during the cast, and a more effective fish-fighting tool as well. In other words, these are Sage rods."
- Don Green
