If you are a fan of the classic "Fish" surfboard, I think you should come by my shop and take out one of my Thrailkill Fish...

For me, it all started after I met Bill Thrailkill. I had been hanging out with Skip Frye at church, out in the water, and in his shop, taking in every last bit of his knowledge about shaping and theory. I had never ridden a board that I liked as much as my Frye's. I used to just sit there with my mouth shut and watch every pass, every move, every detail. At one point, he made a comment to me about being the "inspector" because I was nearly eyeball-to-foam from tip to tail on every square inch of a fish he was shaping for someone. Needless to say, I found no flaws... not even a scratch that didn't match perfectly with the other side. Anyhow, we got to talking about Greenough, flex, Lis, Fish, Geppy, Pendarvis, Pleskunas, and where the "Fish" surfboard was going. At the time he mentioned that the surface hadn't even been scratched as far as the possibilities of where the design could go. Later, I "inspected" the Frye/Pleskunas "wings" glassed onto the rails of his experimental fish designs, tucked into the quiver of boards on the south wall (left hand wall) of his shop. I thought that the fish was the ultimate in board design and surfing. Then I met Bill Thrailkill. It was like Yin had met Yang, going from Frye to Thrailkill in my mind's eye of board and fin design theory. Frye was all about flex and all about having those Geppy fins lined up on the pins right at the butt crack. Thrailkill was anti-flex, all about speed out of rigidity, and swore upon a fish design with no butt crack cut out of the tail, but more of a wide square tail, arc tail, or broom tail, driven by two symmetrically foiled fins in Fins Unlimited boxes, glassed 2" off center (the stringer being the center), and working best with rigid high aspect fins foiled on the insides, flat on the outsides, and 6" bases (Thrailkill or Brewer Templates). My mind has been doing flips ever since. I had been lucky enough to spend time learning from masters of both worlds.

I guess I am a sucker for extremes, because I can't put down my 5'10" and 6'9" Frye Fish that Skip and my wife Melissa surprised me with (one on my birthday, and one at Christmas). Nor can I ever part with my collection of Skip Frye foiled flex fins. And I have shaped more Frye, Lis, Pendarvis, and Pleskunas inspired fish/fish-quad style boards that I can shake a stick at. Yet, I have been taking in everything Bill Thrailkill says (especially after 3 seminars at the Surfing Heritage Foundation and trips to Jim Phillips' shop) about design, theory, rigid vs. flex, thicker foils vs. thinner foils, hard edges, down rails, venturi effect, etc. and I have gravitated toward trying to find the ultimate speed board for the upper third of the wave face. I have templated out Bill's "New Shape" Template, the 7'10", the "one board quiver", the modified Phil Edwards template, the gun curve template, Bills rocker template for the one board quiver, and I have combined what I have learned from him into a 5'10", a 6'0", and a 6'8" with down rails, a hard tail sharp enough to slice yer nuts off, and twin fins in boxes 2" off center (each fin 1" off center)... just like the man taught me. Bill and I worked on these recently and I picked up 4 sets of his custom fins for these boards. I think the man knows what he is talking about. Bill says there is a Venturi effect that occurs between those fins at that precise distance, and I intend to find out exactly what it is that he has discovered.