By: Thomas Raines
Sakura Fishing is a company located in the heart of wine country in Bordeaux, France. They were founded in 2005 by Francis Coutou and team member Frank Rosmann. The company produces a variety of fishing essentials that have a high quality build similar to products you would find on the high end of the Japanese market. The company actually has some ties to the Japanese market by being the exclusive distributor of Gary Yamamoto products in France. They even helped to develop an exclusive color of the Fat Ika for the French market. Many of their baits are unlike anything we have ever seen here in the United States. In fact, their baits are not available at all in the US market. Sakura was kind enough to send us some of their products to see how they perform in American waters.
We didn’t get a chance to test all of the baits we received due to the pattern of most fish this time of year but we did get a chance to try out their spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, jerkbaits, and a few soft plastics. Before I even fished with the spinnerbaits and chatterbaits I was very impressed with the build quality of the baits. I am told the skirts are hand tied and all the baits are hand painted as well. The jerkbaits have the nice magnetic weight transfer system which has become the standard for jerkbaits as of late. The plastic seems very solid on these baits and the casting system works phenomenally for maximum casting distance. I used these jerkbaits for walleye one afternoon and once one of these toothy critters got a glimpse of the bait it was game over for the rest of the school. The chatterbait is a workhorse in thick grass and the hard head on this bait, formulated by a special blend of antimony, does not chip making it very close to the feel of a tungsten jig head. This bait along with the spinnerbait are smaller in profile compared to baits of similar weight due to this antimony blend used in the jig heads. The soft plastics I tried were their “Gobygo” swimbaits, I used these baits as a trailer on the chatterbait and it seemed to help give the bait a more erratic motion when retrieved. Overall I was very impressed with these baits, they caught my eye online because of some of their more uniquely designed baits but I never imagined I would be looking to put down some of my most trusted lures in place of these products. Currently Sakura products have not entered our market here in the US but they are always open to expanding if there is interest in the products. If you’d like to see Sakura come to a tackle shop near you go let them know on their Instagram page: @sakurafishing_official or on their website: www.sakura-fishing.com