Long Fishin’

The latest model to join the ranks of the Cord Surfboards range is a long fish, born from head shaper Markie Lascelles’ on-going enjoyment and experimentation with twin fins. Having shaped and ridden all variants of classic fish, hybrid twins and longer channel-bottom twin fin pin-tails, in everything from weak beachbreaks to heaving slabs and rifling points, last autumn he shaped himself a long fish to sate his curiosity, with little expectation that it would become a permanent model.

The idea of stretching out a classic fish template is a relatively new one, and still quite niche. It developed, unsurprisingly, out of the San Diego scene - the birthplace of the original fish. Skip Frye, an iconic shaper renowned for his boards designed around maximising flow and trim speed, was getting a lot of orders for his DH fish model off the back of clips of Tom Curren and Derek Hynd surfing them in The Search and then Litmus. But Frye was only really comfortable shaping these boards if he was riding them, and he wasn’t sure he could surf a board that short anymore. So he maxed out a fish blank, shaped himself a 6’2” and then never rode it. A few years later shaper and blank designer Pat Rawson spoke to Skip about a designing a blank for a bigger fish, and Skip ended up shaping himself a 6’9” and taking it for a surf at San Onofre.

“Oh man, it was so good. I was like a little kid, man - the thing was just: rebound, floater. It was the shortboard thing all over again. I hadn't ridden a board under 8 foot in about five or six years. It was like, a 6'9" and it was really neat, and ever since then I started making them and I've had really good feedback.”

- Skip Frye talking to Andrew Kidman from his book 'Ether'

Since then the long fish has grown in popularity, although you still don’t see too many about. Which is odd, because their surfing characteristics of down the line speed, flow and manoeuvrability are what almost all of us are after in a surfboard. They’re often described as the ideal shortboard for a longboarder, and are a great alternative to an egg or midlength, but Markie’s first experiences on his convinced him that this design is so much more.

“I just couldn’t get over how well this design ran down the line and how smoothly it connected sections. I took one to Ireland with me at the start of autumn and then when I got back we had a great run of shoulder high waves and some great banks locally and it was all I was surfing. It was just surfed so well, caught waves so easily, and was a heap of fun.”

- Markie

Markie’s starting point for the Cord long fish was his much-loved Flying Vee design. He extended the outline, developed a range from 6’6” to 7’2”, and pulled the tail out to give a wider tail block but most importantly a straighter outline for maximum speed. The nose has been pulled in so that it doesn’t catch on those late drops and re-entries. To balance and compliment the length of the board and straighter outline, the Long Fish has more curve in the rocker profile with a noticeable kick through the tail to give the board a really tight turning radius whether you’re turning off your back foot or laying it on rail.

On the bottom there’s a single to double concave that starts in front of your front foot delivering lift and really sensitive rail-to-rail transitions, moving to a big spiral-vee through the fins and the tail for maximum manoeuvrability. The result is a surfboard that feels much smaller when you’re surfing it than when you’re paddling it. The rails are pulled down to trim all of the fat out of this design and deliver unrivalled down-the-line speed.

The result is a board that’s far more versatile than it’s larger dimensions would suggest. The R&D board has been a mainstay in Markie’s quiver throughout the autumn and winter, and it was the obvious choice for which design to take through to launch as our next model. This is a surfboard that any surfer will have a world of fun on.

Order Your Long Fish Here