Get to Know: The Special Recipe Fish
When we first started building boards in the early 2000's, twin fin fishes were all the rage.
One of the most influential boards I owned during my teens and 20's was a twin fin fish that I blindly bought at the suggestion of my cousin Reid.
It made sense why they were so popular—fishes provided the paddling and glide of bigger boards, with some of the rail to rail flow that bigger boards often lack. Then, as quickly as they came, the interest in them kind of dried up. We went through a long stretch where the twin fin fish was kind of relegated to the periphery of our board range.
Orders would come in periodically, but they weren't nearly as en vogue as they had been in the early years of Almond's board building history.
I was as guilty as anybody, my 5'10 Sandia Fish sat collecting dust while I instead reached enthusiastically for boards like the 5'4 Secret Menu, or 6'4 Pleasant Pheasant.
Fast forward to 2025...
We're midway through May and the #1 most popular board in our board book to start the year is the Special Recipe Fish.
I'm not quite ready to declare that fishes are "back" but they are definitely attracting more attention than they had been. If you combine the sales of Joys, Pleasant Pheasants, and BBF's, the mid-length category is still top of many surfers' list. But it is good to see a renewed sense of enthusiasm for the twin fin fish. It definitely has me wondering if we should have been paying more attention to them all along.
The Special Recipe Fish is uniquely drawing attention—likely because of the combination of a full-ish fish outline and the more progressive rail and bottom contour. This is a fish model that is far from a retro throwback. It has the benefit of being generously volumed under your chest—for maximum paddling glide and early-wave-catching, but it is also very able to be pushed and surfed more progressively. (Tighter turns, more critical sections, etc.)
If you are looking for a loose, flowy board with lots of speed and control, Drew Meseck recently called the Special Recipe "hands down my favorite board I've ever ridden."
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