Few things will trend throughout all of surfing quite like the hype over a fresh new shape. Or in the case of a fish Matt Biolos made in the ’90s, an old shape that’s given new life. The …Lost label was still an up-and-coming operation from Biolos three decades ago. He was just barely creeping into his mid-20s when he saw a clip of Tom Curren on a kneeboard.
“Oh! Tom Curren riding a fish,” he says. “It was a little spark.”
A certain talented grom named Chris Ward called with a request soon after.
“Chris was…I don’t know, 14 or 15? He was a little Curren disciple. Chris calls and says, ‘Make me a fish! Like Tom Curren!’ And I didn’t really know…what the fuck, what’s a fish supposed to look like?” Biolos remembers. So he winged it.
“I went to BC (Surfshop, in San Clemente) and just stood there, looking at the old board collection, up on the ceiling.”
He spotted a few boards and used them as reference for an outline of what he knew (or thought) a fish should be. A swallow tail and a twin fin.
“I just stared up at the walls and then came in here (shaping room) and cranked out a fish. A little twin fin about 5’5″ x 19 1/4. I randomly made the nose and the tail the same width.”
Cory Lopez and Chris Ward got hooked on that fish on the North Shore. They had to share it. Ward ordered another. Then Andy Irons wanted one. Before anybody knew it, Matt Biolos had a board that was catching like wildfire into the next season on the North Shore: 5’5″ X 19 1/4″.
