Retro fish work good here in Hawaii. I don’t have one, but I do have a modern version with multiple fins.
There’s a guy that comes to the spot I surf when it’s really good and he rips on a keel fish. I hadn’t seen him for 3 or 4 years, but he came back the other day when we had a solid swell. He still rides a keel fish and rips. I’ve been out with him when it’s been close to double overhead and he rides just like this clip from Monday. His board was shaped by Pat Rawson, a 5-10. This guy’s name is Alex Cox and he lives on the north shore. It was so nice to see him again. We’ve been lucky to be out on a few epic days with just a handful of guys. We were out on this day (photo below) when Devin Howard showed up. This was one of the best days of surf at Tennis Courts that I’ve seen.
If you put some rocker (but nothing too aggressive) on these fish they can be extremely versatile, i have used the red 5’4" on several conditions and it feels great. I will share a video of a friend that rips using it, it’s not a great video but you can see that it can definitely do some tight turns for a keel.
About the rocker, on a 5’4" i have used 2" on the tail, 5/8" about 12" from the tail, on the nose i used 3 5/8" and about 12" from the nose i used 5/8", these rocker dimensions seem a bit aggressive for a retro fish, but I like them to be able to go a bit more vertical than what they “should”.
I love riding fish and i own a few, they are working perfectly so far with these dimensions and on a variety of wave conditions, just watch out with the rocker curve from the middle until the nose section, if there are any flat spots during it, it will catch the rail if that section hits the wall of the wave while doing turns, I felt that on one of my first ones. The rocker curve has to be as continuous as possible.
Not at all, i use a double concave between the fins that go until the tail, i like to give them just a slight kicktail, that combined with the deep swallow do the trick to do a bit tighter turns and some “vertical” surf.
…the first one desire for the people to buy a board is to ride nice. Not every one can but nobody wants to surf worst.
In all these nonsense about monkey does what monkey do; check some great surfers how they track a lot riding these keel finned too thick stuff; but they seem that cannot think in a modern fish iteration; similar to the yellow one but with thinner tail rails and more tail rocker. Also with canard quads or modified ones.
I have seen lots of generalizations about Fish Size. If you expect a 7’6" board to perform like a 5’6"-6’1" board you are a fool.
However, a properly re-sized fish concept brings a new dynamic to the midlength board genre.
It is my observation that very few re-sized fish have been built and ridden in the mid-size range. And yet, lots of negatives are thrown out about longer interpretations of the fish shape. I question wether those criticisms are made by those who prefer riding mid-length surfboards.
I have ridden boards from 5’6" to 9’8" inches. I prefer a length of 7’6". I also found the oldstyle longboard/noserider of the late 60s (Bing Nuuhiwa and Weber Performer) to be a fun riding style that I prefer over modern designs.
[Quote]…the first one desire for the people to buy a board is to ride nice. Not every one can but nobody wants to surf worst.
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Haha and that’s how they sell a million pro surfer inspired designs to guys who bob around the lineup then come in and complain they didnt get any good waves.
Interesting page with a lot of helpful info and good looking boards but I’m still left with some questions. I’m shaping a 5,6 x 21x 2 ½’’ twin fin at the moment and already made some progress. It is an old school looking fish but want to give it a bit more performance. I want to surf it a bit more vertical and in the pocket because we don’t have long rides here in the Netherlands. front rocker is a bit more than 3’’ and tail 1 1/2’’ rocker. Thereby I was thinking to have around 33L in the board considering I’m around 154lbs. I’m almost done shaping and thinking about the fin placement I want to go with and I have the feeling the tail area is maybe a bit to thick. I came up with the following numbers for fin placement and wondering what you guys think of it: Toe in 3/16’’ off rail: 1 ¼’’ and not sure about the distance from tail. A lot of people throw numbers and not sure what I need to take(somewhere between 8 and 10 ½’’ )?! The bottom contours are flat on the nose to single and ending in a double concave. Still doubting if these contours are deep enough because it’s the first surfboard I shape and they are pretty shallow. Sorry for the amount of questions but I’m eager to learn!!!
You can reverse engineer the longtitudinal fin location from the board pictures in the original post.
Your template has a lot of curve at the wide point, and that puts a lot of angle into your tail with a still fairly straight template past the wide point. The board will track on that rail, but with that much angle, it’ll induce a negative angle attack on your fin. I did something like that once, and ended up with a hyper loose board. Maybe that will work in your conditions, maybe not. There is an ideal tail rail angle for twin fins, and that is well represented in the board pictures in the original post.
