The Fishtory: A Brief History of the Fish Surfboard Design

04 . 09 . 21

Why Fish?

When summer starts to show its face each year, surf shops and magazines begin their annual round of promoting various “Fish” surfboards, usually hanging the label on anything with a bit more volume and a swallowtail. Touted as being the perfect shortboard option for the small, weak waves usually associated with summer months, the Fish is actually a versatile shape with a fascinating history (and three distinct “species”) that deserves greater consideration than just as a junk-wave “plan B” for surfers who don’t want to ride a longboard.

The Lis Fish: Unlikely Origins

The Fish was actually designed initially for anything but small, sloppy waves; the first incarnations were made to surf the heavy, hollow reef breaks around South County San Diego such as Big Rock in La Jolla and Newbreak at Sunset Cliffs. In 1967 Point Loma kneeboarder Steve Lis shaped the first Fish from a snapped longboard (most likely inspired by the twin-finned “twin pin” design by Surfboards La Jolla), and every element of the design was tuned to suit the challenging waves that he loved; the short length allowed manoeuvrability in hollow sections; the high volume meant that despite it’s short length it would paddle into waves easily; the fish (or “swallow”) tail is akin to two single pin tails to hold into the wave face, and the down rails are made for speed. The fact that so many of the Fish’s design characteristics (such as a flat bottom for speed and a wide tail that makes the shape looser through turns) are also desirable in small wave boards is almost coincidental.

Lis and the crew of San Diego kneeboarders who were the test pilots for the Fish were underground though; whilst the design eventually leaked out into the wider world of surfing, the shape’s origin story didn’t go with it. Possibly the first person to surf standing-up on a Fish, rather than ride it as a kneeboard, was a Point Loma friend of Lis’ named Jeff Ching.

“Stevie Lis was knee boarding on a 4’7” kneeboard that had a big split swallow tail and dual keel fins, and was doing the most amazing things with the speed that he generated like racing way out in front and then doing full wrap round house cut backs. One of his waves that still is stuck in my mind was one where he had so much speed that he pulled out of the wave and did a 180 on the back of the wave, and then dropped back in to continue riding. I got the idea of standing up on Stevie’s knee board from Val Ching, who stood up on wooden paipo boards at The Wall at Waikiki Beach when I was a paipo-boarding grom in the early 60’s. One day the Sunset Cliffs crew were all sitting on the beach at our local reef and I asked Stevie if I could have a go at it with his kneeboard. I swam it out and caught my first wave that made history. The best way that I could describe it was it was like riding on your feet. Unlike the gunny single fins we were riding at the time the board actually squirted out of turns and all I had to do was think of where I wanted to put it on a wave. From that day on I rode Stevie’s kneeboarduntil he got tired of me borrowing it and made me a 5’5”. With the new standup Fish I was able to ride tubes, nose ride, take off super late on my knees, take the highline down a walled up wave, do roundhouse cut backs and climb the foam ball. I even did a carving turn on the underside of a lip upside down. The Fish is the most versatile wave-riding vehicle ever invented!”

Jeff Ching

Jeff Ching riding a Steve Lis Fish in 1970, photographed by Warren Bolster

However, when Jim Blears and David Nuuhiwa placed 1st and 2nd riding Fishes in the 1972 World Championships, held in waist high waves in San Diego, the Fish earned a reputation for small wave performance – and it stuck.

Following Blears’ World Championship win in junk surf, the stand-up Fish design was developed to further accentuate its small wave performance features and as a result most of these iterations were difficult to control and surf in waves over head high. Because the original Fish was designed and surfed as a kneeboard it was surfed with an incredibly low centre of gravity which combatted the looseness and skittishness that resulted from the wide tail, flat bottom profile and stiff, low profile keel fins. The design soon fell out of favour, until Hawaiian surfer Reno Abillira took a fish to a series of contests in Australia in the mid 1970s.

MR’s Twinny

Abillira’s 5’3” twin-finned fish caught the attention of Newcastle surfer Mark Richards, who at 6’1 was tall for a competitive surfer and despite his natural ability struggled against shorter, lighter rivals on the narrow-tailed single fins of the era when the surf was small at competitions. He adapted the design to produce a longer surfboard with a narrower, cut-in tail (perhaps inspired by the Ben Aipa stingers of the era) to offset the loss of maneuverability from the increased length, and with large twin fins rather than keels. Richards’ interpretation of the Fish was designed to conform to the contest judging criteria of the late 70s and provide a competitive advantage, and between 1979 and 1982 he became the first surfer to win four consecutive World Championships – all on MR twin fins. When Simon Anderson added a third fin in 1981, the design again fell into the shadows.

inside the tail of a wooden fish surfboard in the otter workshop

Otter Surfboards wooden surfboard workshop course in Cornwall Lloyd fish tail sanding detail

The Lost 90s

In 1994 Tom Curren rode a 5’7” “Fireball” Fish shaped by Tom Peterson in Bawa, Indonesia, but few surfers could relate to what he was able to achieve on the design. A couple of years later, in 1996, Chris Ward watched Curren surfing a Fish on the North Shore and called …Lost shaper Matt Biolos to ask him to shape him “a Fish”. Biolos visited some local surf shops that he knew had old surfboards hanging on the walls to “read up” on the design, and his interpretation was a 5’5” x 19”¼” round nosed but narrow tailed surfboard with a more curved template than the 60’s originals. The …Lost shapes were performance Fish, with fast, flat bottoms and designed for more radical surfing. Under the feet of their team riders Chris Ward, Andy Irons, Cory Lopez and Bruce Irons, almost anything was possible and the 1997 film 5’5” x 19”¼” kick-started the “short/fat/wide” surfboard movement and the shift away from “standard” 6’2” shortboards towards alternative shapes and, eventually, back to the source of the original 1967 Steve Lis Fish.

Retro Revival and a Summer Slop-buster, or Slab-Suitable?

These days a Fish can be (almost) whatever you want it to be. Some Fish are small-wave shortboards, whilst others are certainly Fishes in outline shape but not necessarily in length. They can have two keel fins, twin fins, twinzers, or quad fin set-ups, and can be designedand tuned to a huge variety of wave types. For us here at Otter Surfboards a Fish needs to have fairly straight rails, low rocker with a flat bottom, and a wide swallow tail. Our 5’10” Fetch Fish has a more progressive tail template but is a “classic” Fish being sub-six-foot and performs well in a wide variety of conditions, whilst our 6’4” Woodburner has a broader tail and more volume throughout so is great for smaller or flatter faced waves.

We’ve surfed our Fetch in larger, hollower waves in the past – the sort that Lis originally designed the Fish to perform in – and know that they go well if surfed with an understanding of how the boards perform, but more often than not they’re also a small day alternative to a longboard. They needn’t be, though, and we hope to see more surfers embracing the Fish’s hollow wave design pedigree in the future, and certainly beyond the summer.

If the history of surfing is something that interests you and you enjoyed this article, then be sure to check out and subscribe to the fantastic History of Surfing and Encyclopedia of Surfing websites which are run by surf historian and writer Matt Warshaw, who kindly assisted us with producing this article.