for glassy lined up conditions a properly made twin keel Fish can’t be beat in 1’-8’ faces, if you can jump right up and start pumping anyway. Kooks will try to drop in on you cause they don’t think you will make sections!!!.
If you surf slow afternoon chop a MR twin would/could be fun cause of the cutback/s-turning ease allowed on a lumpy peak by not having a center fin. I would recommend a removeable center fin for the MR style to stop the slide of twinfins on the down the line racy waves!
I live in San Diego(Fish ground zero), the Fish took off again after Rob Machado, Malloys, Curren, Derek Hyde were filmed riding them 2-3 years back. Now the japanese are buying them like mad, can’t even get the wood fins from L.Gephart now cause he’s buried in backloged orders headed to Japan. Average price w/tint and gloss and wood keels $800-1000. Skip Frye is God to the flow bro’s, and the japanese are into it, with cash!!.
In the 70’s they didn’t toe in the keels 1/8" w/slight cant, and now we use concaves and Blue foam weight and 4/6oz glass. The ‘new’ fishes blow the doors off of Lis’s 70’s knee boards. I rode them in Point Loma during the 70’s and they were much more limited in manuverability than now(expecially backside). You could literally own a well built fish as your only board for under 8’ conditions. The MR style is a joke- no drive, but cutbacks are on a dime. Speed is an essential part of all manuvers. The wide base of the keel, almost eliminates the unwanted slide allowing drive from pumping turns
Possible logical reason fish’s lost popularity in the late seventies?
Lis was a loudmouth jerk to all Newbreak/Big Rock un-locals around Point Loma.
Gephart(wood fin guru) was an even bigger jerk.
We hated all kneeboarders in the 70’s anyway.
We hated all logo’s, contests, contest surfers, longboarders, anyways.
This all resulting in David Nuuhiwa’s Fish getting nailed to the OB Pier at the '72 World Contest, (what a sight!)
Also, all us backyard guys got ahold of ‘finboxes’ around '74 or so, allowing better singlefin possibilities (a pulled in fish templete with a center box works damn good also resulting in what was to be called a ‘summer fish’ and then a swallowtail.
But a large backyard board building community was thriving in San Diego, and the sky was the limit, Fish’s were cool but we had insatiable design ideas and needed to try everything!!! Hell, you could make a whole board for $45. and that’s with cutlaps and gloss and insane multi-color Rainbow fin and detailed pinlines!!!
Watch innermost Limits of Pure Fun, that’s what I am talking about.
I’ll never stop building boards for the right reasons…back to work.
