Best soft top fish surfboards

Does a fish tail make sense on a soft top? Here’s a nice selection foam fish surfboards out there – for the true seafood lover!

When the sea offers medium height and a bit of steepness, a fish is a good choice. Fish surfboards generally have little rocker – which makes it easier to generate speed in small waves. The split tail supports round turns and smooth transitions. It turns out that a fish or swallow tail works pretty well on soft tops as well! From INT to Mick Fanning Softboards: We made a list of some of the hottest fish foamies available.

It’s exciting: the past years a wide range of new soft boards have entered the market. Ten years ago it were primarily the surf schools that worked with foamies. The shapes were limited to mini malibus – round nose and tail, nothing too innovative. Since the soft top revolution in the 2010s a ton of cool and diverse shapes have been added to the market, appealing to experienced surfers too. Not sure a fish-shaped foam surfboard is right for you? See an overview of surfboard shapes in our post types and shapes of soft top surfboards.

MF Softboards

Mick Fanning started MF softboards recently and has brought some interesting foamies to the market. At FoamieCrew we’re big fans of the MF softboards models. In our review, which you can read here, we share our experience surfing the MF DHD Twin in chest-high conditions.  The extra glassing makes the soft tops surf almost as if it were normal shortboards. The MF DHD Twin is a performance oriented foamie – one you definitely want to ride in small summer waves.

• MF 5’8 Twin – see current prices for your region here

Softech

The USA brand has a lot to offer. Literally: their product range is enormous. In terms of quality Softech is also one of the better foam builders.

• Mason Ho Twin Performance – view board
• Kyuss King Fish Performance Softboard (pictured below)
• Rocket Fish – view board
• 5’4″ Torpedo – view board
• 5’4″ Handshaped Quad Shortboard – view board

Liquid Shredder

A brand well known for body boards and SUPs – Liquid Shredder has a wide range of foam surf boards too. Made in Peru and probably one of the oldest foamie brands out there. Liquid Shredders website isn’t much – luckily they’re on Amazon too. They offer fish foam boards in multiple sizes.

• 5’8 Eighties Guy Retro Fish – view board
• 5’8 Fish Twin Fin – view board

Catch Surf

With it’s 80ties tropical prints (and quality foam boards) the American brand is taking over the surfing world by storm. And ample appearances in viral Jamie O’Brian videos certainly don’t hurt! The Skipper and the Lost model are available at different sizes.

• Skipper – view board
• Lost 5’5 Odysea – view board

Indio

Off course the Spanish entrepreneurs were smart enough to jump on the foamie train. They have initiated the Indio label for all things soft. Very recognizable boards with the rectangles on the deck. Entry-level pricing and a suberb sales channel strategy. A surf school favorite in Europe, for sure.

• 5’6 fishy – see FoamieCrews review here!  rd
• 6’0 fish – view board
• 6’6 retro – view board

Mullet

Australian renegade foamie makers aiming at progressive soft top surfing.

• 5’6 fish finger – view board

Torq

Torq is well known for making durable and sturdy beginner surfboards. They have a foam fish model as well that looks pretty decent with the quad fin option!

• 5’11 Mod Fish Soft Deck – view board

INT Softboards

The Fish design is at the core of INT’s foam business. They have build a really good looking performance soft top (so good looking that we’ve put it in the header image of this article). This company is quite innovative when it comes to manufacturing. Read more about that here. 

• 5’10 Fish – view board

NSP

Perhaps NSP isn’t the most ‘core surfer’ brand – it does make pretty durable boards. From conversations with surf schools and rentals we’ve learned that NSP’s and BICs tend to last several seasons.

• 6’4 Protech Fish – view board

Drag

Another underground brand that aims to provide a solution for over-crowded Australian line-ups with unbreakable little nuggets. Definitely aimed at the more performance oriented foam frother.

• DART 5’6 thruster – view board

Disclaimer: there are plenty more models with fish-like tails available. However, a typical fish surfboard is wide and small. That’s why we excluded all boards above 6’6.