Surfing Waves

Hi, im currently looking for my first board. Im gonna go with a local shaper which is very good and open to talk with so im also gonna ask his opinion, but in the meantime i wanted to ask here to see what insights i get.

So my current surf experience is i took a couple of lessons, used longboard and funboard (bic 7 4) and then managed to borrow their funboard for a couple of days for practice.

Then recently i was 4 days at the ocean again, school was closed (its autumm here now) but i got a friend there who has a 6 2 retro fish. After i begged him to borrow it he warned me not to get frustrated since it wasnt a board for my skill, especially small and unstable. I said ok ok, but i just wanted to be in the water with a board. So of i went and to my surprise i felt pretty much at home on the fish. Didnt have trouble with the balance of the board on the paddle and on the second day i even managed to start following most waves on a straight line on the duck position, both feet and both hands on the board.

So after that experience, of course i know im a far way from a retro fish yet but lead me to think if there is something good enough to learn on that offers some kind of middle ground between a funboard and a fish.


So i found there are many funboards hybrids but i have no idea if they are just marketing or if they actually make the funboard shape a bit more interesting, take the 7s superfish shape for example, is it a good combination or just a bad mix of things?

The reason im also asking for this is that it would help me getting a board that would last me a long time and allow me to improve since i dont have unlimited funds and selling a board is not always easy here.

If there is any help im 5 9 tall 170 lbs and fit since i always did sports.

thanks for any opinions.

Great interesting all the marketing hype ( but then who would say they sold rotten boards)
The 7S boards are basically pretty good as a functional shape for the stage you are talking about.
I would consider the 7'3"models in that shape and look at other similar boards.

Thanks, ill reasearch a bit more and wait till i talk to the shaper and see what i come up with. I started to wonder what a big retrofish hybrid, retro fish shape around 6 6 or 6 8 length and maybe 22 or 23 wide and 3 inch thick with a 3 fin setup would feel like................. Anyway winter is coming here and im non equiped for cold water so i have a couple of months of boredom to dedicate to get a proper board.

Southsurfer wrote:I started to wonder what a big retrofish hybrid, retro fish shape around 6 6 or 6 8 length and maybe 22 or 23 wide and 3 inch thick with a 3 fin setup would feel like

...like surfing on an airbed

By the time you get to 23" wide and 3" thick, that's too much volume and not enough surface area, so it'll feel like you're bobbing about on top of the water rather than the surfboard engaging with the wave.

There is definitely a place for retro fishes, but bon't be fooled by trying to get a short board with too much volume - if you need the volume, then the best place to put it is in the length.

The advisor here go to great lengths to explain stuff about length.
Forget super width, I find about 22 the maximum width and that is on a 9ft board.
Really if you can get your hands on a board of the dimensions you are thinking about and can try it, do so!
Volume is not the be all and end all it is how that volume is made into a meaningful board.
Changing a couple of dimensions can make a pig or a pearl,.
Borrowing boards of different types is a great answer to figuring out what works for you.

Thanks, yes its hard to know what sounds good in theory and what would work good in the water so i really appreciate the advice. The reason im struggling with the funboard advice i received everywhere is that i had a better time and made more progress in a few days with a 6 2 retro fish than on a 7 4 funboard i know its sounds the reverse to what everybody else told me it would be but...... well who knows maybe im just an unusual surfer wannabe

Certainly you can progress on the board you choose, the BIC funboards are in my opinion jus a step below foamies in their barginess and so the 6'2'' would seem better.
If your instinct says you can do, it why not?
I think you find a mile of difference between any decent board like the 7S and the BIC and difference again with a hybrid.