choosing your fins

Surfboard Fins

Choosing the best surf fins for your surfboard

Finding what fins suits you best is a difficult task:

•  First because testing conditions are never the same: You go in the water and wave conditions are always different, the waves don´t break in the same way, the water surface may or may not be the same, tide, the you having a good or a bad day..
•  To be able to test you aso need to get used to the fins first to really understand them
• We normally have too many things to worry about  in our surfing (like come out alive) that it makes it even harder to concentrate on feeling the fins effect on our surfboard. :-)
• ...

For all of this we need to spend lots of time just concentrating on the fins response with good and bad conditions on each set of fins models we want to test. The good news are that there a re a few tips to speed things up a little bit.
First choosing the size. It is really easy and really important to surf with the right size of fins for your weight and your board. As a main advice try to stick to your size, that is, if the manufacturer says depending on your weight you should be using a certain size of fin, normally ( S, M, or L), stick with that. Having that wrong will just make things harder for you.
Secondly the material. there are many different models and materials. Stick with the fiber ones (avoid plastics, all types), and if they have carbon on their base even better (normally more expensive, but they are so much better).

Out of all the fins I have tested, which have been many, including all brands, from traditional G models to funky models of other brands I would recommend the traditional FCS, Future ans Simple Fins brands. Simple Fins is a new brand of surf fins that have concentrated on keeping it simple, choose your model based in your surfing habits, and give them a try.