The Long Haul Gear Reviews are designed to give you in-depth, honest feedback on the gear that we’ve used and abused for more than a few weeks or months. Often, this is gear we’ve fished for years. The idea is to give you a look at how durable this gear is, and whether its marketing hype lives up well after launch day fades into the past. In this review, we’re looking at one of the flagship rod launches of the past few years—the Sage R8 Core.
The R8 Core is the top-of-the-line rod from Sage, representing the company’s eighth such stick. It’s built for a wide range of applications, with models ranging from a 9′ 3-weight to a 9′ 9-weight. This review will focus on my 9′ 5-weight, which I’ve been fortunate to own since slightly before the rod launched in 2022. I’ve fished it on a variety of trout rivers in Wyoming and Utah in that time, and it’s even pulled some light duty on alpine lakes, as well.
Sage R8 Core Fly Rod:
Sage R8 Core Fly Rod
Rod Specs:
- Size tested: 9′ 5-weight
- Intended use: multi-application trout fishing (dry flies, nymphs, streamers)
- Action: fast
- MSRP: $1,050.00
Pros:
- Extremely light and sensitive
- Powerful, even in wind
- Accurate in the right hands
Cons:
- Expensive
- Action isn’t for everyone
The Skinny
The Sage R8 Core 9′ 5-weight is marketed as the all-around trout rod for serious anglers. It’s supposed to be the best jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none 5-weight that we’ve come to expect, and in a lot of ways, it is.
This rod packs serious power. It generates enormous line speeds, even with true-to-weight lines. I fished it with both true-to-weight and half-size heavy lines (Scientific Anglers Amplitude Trout and Amplitude Infinity, respectively), and while the rod certainly prefers a half-size heavy line, it performed wonderfully with true-to-weight line, too.
The R8 Core is a fast rod, but it’s not without plenty of feedback. You wouldn’t mistake this for a Winston, but an experienced angler will appreciate the subtle flex as the rod loads and unloads during the cast, or the quick response of the tip when drifting tiny nymphs through a deep pool.
Sage outfits the rod with their classic snub-nose grip, and a dark wood reel seat insert. The typical Sage wraps adorn the rod, and it comes in a white aluminum tube. It certainly feels and looks like an expensive rod. It’s built in Bainbridge Island, Washington.
The Time Test
In the right hands, the R8 Core is as accurate a fly rod as you’ll find. Accuracy relies mostly on the abilities of the caster, but rod construction also matters. If a rod tracks straight (the tip moves in a straight line throughout the cast) and the blank doesn’t move too far side-to-side (oscillation), you have a stick that’s inherently accurate. The R8 checks both those boxes, and I had no problems using it to toss blue-winged olives to wary sippers, pale-morning duns to stocky summer trout, or plopping a hopper-dropper rig tight against the bank.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s rare to break a fly rod on a fish. Most often, rods are damaged by split shot, nymphs, or streamers hitting the blank during a cast. That creates a weak point that will eventually fail. Or, the rods are slammed in truck doors, tailgates, or stepped on. They might look fine, but they’ll break the next time you’re fighting a fish.
All that is to say—I haven’t damaged my R8 Core, and it hasn’t broken. Other than soiled cork, it’s in the same shape it was the day I got it.
Where this rod really stood out, though, is just how powerful it is. It’ll throw heavy hopper-dropper rigs into the wind without struggling. Part of that is casting technique (and I’m a middling caster, at best), but this is a fast, powerful rod. There were multiple days when I was fishing in the famous Wyoming wind, and I thought I’d need to step up to my 6-weight to finish out the day. The R8 Core kept up, though, and maintained the feel and delicacy that most of us want in a 5-weight.
Even with all its power, it’ll lay flies down softly when needed. It’s not the first rod I’d reach for in technical dry fly fishing, but it’ll get the job done if you run into a hatch.
My Recommendation
The Sage R8 Core is an objectively great rod, especially in the 9′ 5-weight configuration. If you want high line speeds, oodles of power, and true versatility, it’s tough to point you in a different direction.
But it’s not my favorite flagship rod, for reasons that are hard to articulate. A lot of anglers and rod makers try to quantify and explain everything about a fly rod—action, length, weight, and even “feel.” It’s useful to do that because those qualities matter in how a rod performs.
The intangibles are what’s hard to communicate, though, and in my hands, the R8 Core doesn’t have the same wow factor I feel from other rods. It’s amazing, I enjoy fishing it whenever it finds its way into my hands, and there’s little for me to pick at as something Sage could improve. It simply just doesn’t make me grin the way other rods do.
So, take that for what it’s worth. Go cast one before dropping the $1,050 on it. And if you’re in the market for a top-tier trout rod, you’re missing out if you don’t put the Sage R8 Core at the top of your list.