Loop Classic 14’ 9/10 4 piece

Simon Young reviews this rod designed by Speycasting champion Eoin Fairgrieve.

Loop Classic 14’ 9/10 4 piece 9140-4
Length: 14’
AFTM rating: 9/10 on blank
Sections: 4
Weight :261 grms
Price: 415.00



Appearance

This Loop 14’ Classic is packaged in a golden-brown linen bag contained in a good quality brown cordura covred tube. Each of the 4 sections is marked with a dot to help alignment. The butt features a dark copper hand anodized finish with a triangular reel seat. There are 2 fuji style and 1 hard lined snake rings on the next section, overall there are 9 snakes and the tip is an oversized affair. The blank is finished in a pleasant medium olive gloss varnish, complimented by dark brown whippings. Loop describe the 63cm handle as “extended” to suit both traditional and modern techniques. The corks are good quality with very little sign of filling finished in a good solid hard neoprene butt cap.

Performance

The rod blank states 9/10 for this 9140-4 Classic Spey mode but on the Loop website it is rated 10/11? Pairing it up with a Loop Classic model 811 reel and a Loop Quattro tip Spey  WF 9/10 the balance felt perfect even before I had cast a line. With the rod loaded the blank bent with a nice smooth progressive curve with no flat spots evident. This made casting very easy to throw tight controlled loops with little effort even with the extra fast sink tip. In this case progressive should not be confused with soft which this rod is not, because the tip recovery was excellent with no bounce detected on the forward or backcast. The rod was still powerful enough to lift a reasonable length of line from the water without collapsing, the sign of a well designed blank. One thing I did notice during use was how firmly the reel seat held the reel in place with a generous cutout in the handle and a similar size in the sliding collar. This is a great touch from the designers at Loop that many other companies have overlooked, ending up with reel seats that would barely hold older reels with thicker feet.

In this day and age there is a very wide choice of 14 or 15’ double-handers and at only £415.00 this rod is excellent value.

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