Fish Specs Suggestions?

If your shortboards are 5'10 and 6'0, and you like them, you could go down to between 5'6 and 5'8... but that's pretty short for a guy your height. I'm 6'1 and I ride a 6'0 retro fish. Not knowing who you are or how/where you surf, I'd say 5'8, but go a bit thinner than typical fish thickness to keep your volume about the same or slightly greater than your shortboards.

Try 5'8 x 16.5 x 21.25 x 16 x 2.5 with between 3.5 and 4" nose rocker and between 1.75 and 2" tail rocker... flatter being faster, curvier being looser... for starters. Then talk to your shaper.

Bring beer.

 

vb would be super fun on a true retro twin fish, so i'd say twin.

& the ...lost rocket is not really anything like a proper fish. distantly related, perhaps, but not like a fish at all beyond the wide & thick part.

 

Traditional twin keel, deep swallow, down rails, fully foiled fish. Gotta be careful, though. Some guys understand the design and can produce a great board, true to the design in form and function, and even add some modern tweaks. Other guys really don't understand what makes them tick, and you end up with something that you find the limits of very quickly.

Those "modern fish" varieties... basically wider, flatter, shorter, thicker shortboards... can be fun when the waves are sub par, and I'm not knocking them. But I see them really falling into the Groveler category. None of them ride like a fish - two completely different designs that draw different lines on the wave. Don't get a fish if you want something that rides like a shortboard but does it in tiny, gutless surf. Get a groveler to do that. Get a fish if you want to experience a totally different kind of surfing.

 

I live in VB and my quiver will alwyas have a Round Nose Fish in it. They are super fun and great in knee to chest high surf, even up to head high they are super fun. I am 5'-8 and 160 lbs, I ride a 5'-5" x 191/4"x 2-3/8.
Your rocket is a long ways from a high performance fish, it has tons of volume but the rocker in a rocket is toatlly different, the rocket has a good amount of tail rocekr in it and prefers to be ridden onff the back foot. A true high perfomance fish is completely different. The RNF is one of the sickest shapes ever, if you deceided to go RNF style YOu could easily ride a 5-9 x 19-3/4 x 2-3/8. Its not for grovelling, its for our VB average day surfing thigh to head high. It will be your favorite board.
Whos the shaper you will win the board from makes a difference also

 

im 6'1 165, and ride a 6'1 18 1/4 2 1/4 in good surf. smaller surf i ride a 5'8 surf rx new toy. its a quad fin catches small waves really easy and is real loose. i tried my friends 5'8 retro fish and it was way too big. for someone my size that is used to riding 6'0 range short board i wuold probably go for something in the 5'2-5'5 range for a retro fish.

 

Here's my two cents...I would probably go with a variation of the old school fish he has posted as one of his "stock" shapes on the website. Why? He has the templates, is comfortable shaping that model, has probably shaped a bunch of them so should have some idea what works best for someone of your size/experience. Plus, the Rocket is a great board, but entirely different from a fish, as others have said. If you end up not liking it, the old school fish shapes are pretty easy to unload as well.

2nd choice would be a longboard. Although I rarely ride one now, they can be a blast, and real easy to iunload if you dont like it.

Description of the twin from his website:




Time tested and virtually unchanged, "The Old School Fish" is based on an original fish shape that somehow survived in the rafters since the '70s. She's wide and flat with no channels or concaves to complicate things. With just a flat bottom and two keel fins she's fast, very fast.

Stock dimensions:

Length - 5' 6" to 6'

Nose - 17 to 18"

Width - 22"

Tail - 16 1/2"

Thickness - 2 1/2"

 

Yeah ...lost makes the Round Nose Fish, but many other shapers have a ROund Nose Fish, which is a high Performance fish. My shaper has one (he actually does alot of ...lost round nose fish as a ghost shaper) but the high performcase fish is one of the best all around shapes for our spot here in VB . YOu have the low entry rocker and a wider nose to get into waves early , and due to this you can ride the boards shorter than a typical shortboard which fits in the pocket of our smaller surf better and its more manuevarble because of the shortened rail length, but they carry enough foam to still float well in the small stuff. The single to double concave also creates a ton of drive which helps when the waves are small

 

I like 4"N and 1 5/8"-2"T (depending on bottom contours) on about a 6'0. If you get the right plug, you can add a bit of flip in the nose over the last 4-5 inches for better performance. So that 4"N includes that flip.

I like a combination of subtle concaves and vee in the bottom... light vee in the entry, to light single, to double concave out the back. If you do that, you can nudge the fins slightly forward and/or in from the rail, and go with less tail rocker. If you go simple flat to vee bottom (more traditional) you can go with a bit more tail rocker, but not kicked... really natural over the back third, keep the fins back, and let the vee add some rail rocker through the tail.

My 2 cents...