impress them even more by standing by your car with darkshades saying" fack this pus im goin to the pub". give the pigdog a kick. after you get really pissed you might try and root your missus sister
The great ''what is/is not a fish'' debate rages on....
In the early 90s, anything with a swallowtail was called a ''fish''. I would try to explain to people that their 18.5'' wide ''step-down'' wasn't really a fish, but they'd look at me funny and tell me that their shaper told them it was a fish.
Greg Loehr had a nice sytem. He did a ''half-fish'', a ''3/4 fish'', and a ''full fish''. I always made sure that anything I shaped that wasn't a real fish had some kind of prefix on it too. IMO this ''issue'' is so hopelessly muddled at this point that until a ''fish commision'' is appointed and convened, and hands down some judgement and ''laws'' to follow, we'll never have a consensus. Might go all the way to the Supreme Court....
That continues to this day, and it’s a load of nonsense. Things have gone further astray, to where I’ve seen boards with one fin and a square or round tail presented as “fish”. I blame it on a combination of marketing hype and ignorant consumers.
Unless the outline closely resembles this, it is not a fish. Some variations in bottom contour and fin setup (quads) will still be in the ballpark. Otherwise, it is not a goddam fish.
What's different now is that ''real fish'' are common, whereas in the early-mid 90s they were oddities. You'd think that might have cleared things up a little, but I realize you can make a strong argument that it hasn't.
I always thought a ''real fish'' should be well under 6'0'' as well, but when you have Steve Lis on Kauai doing his present boards between 6'0'' and 7'+ (with 4 fins), it's hard to belabor that point.
...........and it's funny you put up a picture of a G&S as example, they may have started the whole confusion by doing the ''summerfish'' in about 1973. It was a single fin, for God's sake, and way too long and pulled in the tail to be called a ''fish''.
(But it might be something the OP would like to see. You probably have a pic, and it might get this thread back on track....)
Yup. The “summerfish” is in the same ad that fish outline came from. There’s a marked difference in the outline, visible to anyone who has an eye for shapes.
I have to agree.Some of these boards being pictured have center widths pushed behind center with needlenose’s. Please disregard the first picture of the singlefin.I was just trying to find an example of a board with a wide nose volume foreward ,square tail board.
Look at a picture of a fish like a Wahoo then look at a picture of a flounder. Both are fish, similar features but very different fish in their overall design. Flounder are fast in short bursts, but mostly lay on the seafloor waiting to ambush their prey. Wahoo are incredibly fast and agile open ocean predators. Their diet consists of anything it sees as it can out run just about anything in the ocean. No matter how you look at it, no one will argue that they aren’t both fish.
A board with a wide body, lower rocker and wide tail has similar characteristics of the original fish design, and the basic premise of the two designs is similar. They are both quicker to get up to speed due to their lower rockers and wider planing surfaces. Usually, both are better paddlers than a typical shortboard. Personally, I like 'em a little more pulled in and a little extra rocker so the performance is more similar to a shortboard (and more versatile than a super wide tail and flat rocker). Several boards pictured achieve this fishiness.
Anyway, I think this is why you see so many boards with similarities to the original fish referred to as “fish.” I don’t think it 's so wrong. I certainly understand why some refer to the original fish as the only true fish design and I think Loehr’s and MD’s idea of quantifying the “fishiness” of the board is a great way to help describe the way the board will ride.
The obvious answer to the original question is the …Lost RNF. Wide nose with narrow tail and thruster fin setup.
I refuse to call this a fish - It’s a thruster with a flat rocker and a wide nose.
You couldn’t pay me to surf one but the thruster fans seem to like them quite a bit.
The RNF was conceived as a ''normal'' board tail on a fish type forward section, and that is exactly what ekim was after.....
Quick story: When I started working with (big company) in 96, I did some fishy type boards for a couple of the team guys. One of them got a few mag photos on his. At the trade show in Jan 97, I was talking to the (big company) honchos, telling them we ought to do some of the boards for the shops, market them a little, etc. Their response was that they weren't ''high performance'' enough. At that exact moment, Matt Biolas walked up and handed us a copy of his brand-new video, just being debuted at the show. It was "5'5'' x 19 1/4''. We put it in the player, watched a few minutes, and I said, ''Not high performance enough, huh?".
The obvious answer to the original question is the ...Lost RNF. Wide nose with narrow tail and thruster fin setup. I refuse to call this a fish - It's a thruster with a flat rocker and a wide nose. You couldn't pay me to surf one but the thruster fans seem to like them quite a bit.
that looks remarkably like an old Gordon and Smith "swallowtail" single fin I rode 30+ years ago. I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same.
I don't think the RNF is a 'winterfish' either. I wouldn't call it a fish. I call it a swallowtail. But, I don't care what you call it. It still looks like a fun little small wave board. I've seen Beatty Rocket Fishes up to 7-6. A pretty good winterfish. I guess ekim(mike)doesn't really want a fish, anyway. Maybe we can help him find what he wants. When he finally decides what he wants. Mike
San Diego guys like the Mirandon brothers, Larry Mabile, Skip Frye and whoever does the shapes for Kane Garden these days (Stu Kenson?) have all played with split tail longboards. The fin arrangements range from twins to quads.
These arguably fall in to the category of big fish and the various model names indicate the connection... "Megladon", "FishSimmons", etc.
Pigeon holing a specific design within precise prarameters rarely works but it's helpful to stay within some sort of reference frame. Call it what you want but many simply won't get it if you stray too far from conventional definition.
A quick look at Kane Garden's "Fish Series" page should be enough for a general idea. The 'Kingfish' and 'Megladon' have sizes to 9 and 11 feet respectively. The Kingfish has a relatively pulled in tail.
http://www.kanegarden.com/KG%20FISH%20SERIES.html
Wide point forward ?
Pulled in tail ? Adult volume ?
You need to check what the Fitzgeralds have got cooking.
plus
if you have an eye for shapes you would see that the widepoint on my board is about 2 inches forward and the board is over 21 wide. yeah they dont have to look ugly and disfunctional to have these useful design paremeters. i put a template over the top of it. one similar to one of pat curens current fish and besides the tail width, it was almost identical! only difference is that the one i shaped will turn off tail in the pocket, make barrels and handle DOH surf better then a mini gun. unlike a bloody twinfin which are pretty useless for any type of small wave hotdogging.
all these old school shapers make these boards to make money to cash in on a “trend”. i dont blame them. building boards is a thankless job and if geoff mccoy can sell a retro board for 4,000$ all power to him. he deserves it for all the years of innovation and creativity. but i doubt he would say in a conversation with progressive surfers that the design is a functional hotdoggers board
just having the backfoot slide over the pins annoys the hell out of me. why not put a square tail and some grip. then your moving toward something like a functional surfboard.
i used to say the same thing , " blah blah that such and such is not a fish" until i relized it was wanking in the extreme. if you build something yourself you can call it whatever the hell you want as long as its not breach of copyright. last time i looked the word “fish” is pretty much in the public domain. i call mine the “palatable fish”
to the critics i say this. maybe change careers to lawyer. you will have more respect as a human being. critics are the scum under the rim of a toilet seat. they dont “create” anything but bad vibe.
the point of this thread and one which i know a few shapers on here can contribute to is pulling the tail on a fish to make em go better. if you dont like the idea then fack off an hijack some one else thread
I’m getting interested in this kind of shape. Maybe I’m a media influenced sucker but the surfing I’ve seen on these shapes (Merrick Twin Fin and “the Robber”) by Dane Reynolds and Rob Machado tickles my fancy- loose, fast and smooth. Also, I loved Shwuz’s demo board which is similar in outline. The CI boards have a really tight swallow, maybe like 5", and are ridden as a twin or twin with trailer. I generally don’t like boards with wide tails, so I imagine these will have good paddle ability (forward widepoint), looseness of the twin, narrow tail to carve…
I’m thinking about my next board…
hi jeff nice out line, but a hideous tail on that merrick. then again there is a saying in the jewellery trade “ugly enough to be a best seller”
those longer ones look like they would be tracky in big surf and to long for small surf
Cool. So, by that logic if I build a chair but decide to call it a table, that then makes it a table?
This thread gets funnier and funnier. I don't think anyone is debating high performance, in general, of wide tail boards compared to narrower designs. The only debate is in definitions. If I put two little rail fins on my single fin does it become a thruster? Because it has three fins? I don't think so. Does a 9-2 Rhino chaser become a mal because it is over 9 feet? I say no. Same type of thing with the fish. Mike