The Search For One... Temple Fork Outfitters Enters the Bass Market

Total Score: 7.17 - GOOD

Introduction: The consumer market for rods is all abuzz again in 2010 with the reappearance of long time rod designing and building legend, Gary Loomis. Early experiences here at TackleTour fishing prototype Kistler Custom Rod builds on top of North Fork Composite blanks pretty much confirm that Gary Loomis is back to form with his new company and their rod blank products.

Introducing Temple Fork Outfitter's SWC 664-1

Even more curious though, is a company leveraging Loomis’s expertise in blank design, but taking those specifications and manufacturing complete rods overseas for sale here in the States. Yes, Temple Fork Outfitters out of Texas, makes no secret about the fact Gary Loomis helped with the rod specifications of their new, complete, Gary Loomis Signature series bass rods. Here now is our first look at these affordable bass rods from Temple Fork Outfitters.

Impressions: The first thing that struck us with our review specimen, the SWC 664-1 was the use of color at the exposed blank portion of the rod’s split rear grip. Not that the color was unattractive but the fact it seemed totally arbitrary. Not until we visited the manufacturer’s website did we realize that the color at the split rear grip is representative of the rod’s specified power.

The SWC 664-1 features a spit rear grip design...

Temple Fork Outfitters makes use of six different colors to indicate what power each stick is. The color our sample came with (a sort of olive green/yellow) is demonstrative of a four power or “medium” in Temple Fork Outfitter’s vernacular.

... with a color coded rear helping to denote the power of the rod at quick glance.

The rod itself, as one might expect for a $99 rod is unimpressive. The split rear grip motif is finally, and all at once, getting really old and tired looking or perhaps it is just this implementation. Temple Fork Outfitters does nothing really special to dress it up. Further, while the rod’s guides are specified with an SiC insert, there’s no mention of the manufacturer for the guides although the frames do look very similar to the Kigan product we’ve seen on Dobyns Rods. The reel seat features a non-exposed blank thru design and the rod does have a small foregrip. Granted, it’s tough to make a good impression on me when I’m back in enthusiast mode .

Detailing on this rod is as we would expect from anything in this price point - rather simple

Lab Tests: All that aside, off to the lab we went with the SWC 664-1 to see how it deflects in comparison to our 2010 baseline rod, the MBR783C GLX2000. Interesting thing here is while the baseline rod is essentially a “3” power in the G.Loomis line and classified as a “medium-heavy”, the Temple Fork Outfitters rod, specified by Gary Loomis is a “4” power rod and classified as a “medium”. End result? They both have almost the same deflection curve on our RoD WRACK demonstrating that even blanks designed by the same person can end up having different words and nomenclatures to describe their “power”. Is it any wonder consumers get confused when trying rods from one manufacturer to the next?

Fig 1: This chart illustrates the deflection characteristics of our SWC 664-1 as compared to that of our 2010 TSFO baseline rod, an MBR783C GLX2000. Note that while the SWC 664-1 is spec'd out as a "medium" powered rod, it really behaves similarly to the GLX2000 which is a prototypical "medium heavy" rod.

RoD WRACK statistics aside, we see that the SWC 664-1 compares favorably to the GLX2000 in weight but that its balancing point and also its balancing torque numbers are higher than the rod that retailed for over six hundred percent more when it was first available ten years ago. Probably a good compromise if you think about it