Steve Lis, looking down the barrel of yet another beautiful fish. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Steve Lis is generally known as The godfather of the fish. It’s a little more complicated than that, but Lis, no matter how you slice it, changed surfboards forever. He’s an extraordinarily good shaper and has more wave knowledge than just about anyone, and in this 10-ish minute video from Mollusk, Lis shapes one for Bryce Baker, an extraordinarily good surfer who has a style built for a Lis fish.
Years ago, I traded boards with a friend of mine somewhere in Baja. It was nearly empty, and he was on a 5’10” fish with a twinnie setup. I never ride fishes and I never ride twins, so I thought it’d be fun. It was then that he gave the most perfect description of riding a 5’10” fish with a twin fin I’ve ever heard. “It’s like riding a watermelon seed,” he told me.
As the story goes, the fish, first developed as a kneeboard, was created when Lis noticed that his fins would drag off the sides of his preferred pintails.
“He decided to split the tail, giving him the width needed to support his fins, while still holding on to the performance characteristics of a pintail,” surfer and writer Adam Fischer explained. “This fish proved to be a barrel machine, able to paddle in early, take fairly late drops, hold high and tight in the pocket and was snappy off the top. It wasn’t long until he had refined the design to suit stand-up surfers, and the fish design took off.”
As the years went on, people played around with the fish design. It fell out of favor slightly, but it’s back in full force again. Watch here as Lis carves one out with expert hands.
