Rob Machado is a surfer that has defined style. Style’s a weird thing, though. It’s hard to define in surfing, but when someone has it, it’s impossible to miss. Machado is a style master. His surfing is fluid and smooth, yet full of understated power. He’s one of the best at working with the wave, its strength adding to his own.
Like a judo master using his opponents strength, Machado pulls from the wave’s power and adds to it. It’s a wonderful thing to watch. He knows what kind of surfboards he likes to ride, and for the last little while that kind of surfboard is not a standard shortboard. Stretched out fishes, flat twinnies, and squashed up quads, Rob likes board that generate speed. Boards that work well in everyday waves. Boards like his new design, the Too Fish.
He’s been into keel fins as of late, and the Too Fish Keel is an example of that. It’s a modernized version of the keel fin sets Rob first earned an enthusiasm for back in the early 2000s.
“I’ve always loved the speed and drive of keel fins,” he says. “But they can be too tracky at times, so with this keel fin set, I created something that was alive in the pocket and on the shoulder with extreme pivot capabilities. This means all the traditional feels of a keel are in this this set, but so is an enlivened turning ability not present in other keel fin sets.”
The Too Fish is a natural evolution from the Go Fish, which hit shelves in 2018. It’s built in Firewire Surfboards Helium Technology, which is extraordinarily light and durable (I have a board built with it that I routinely bash off rocks without worry), but can be a little too floaty for some people’s preferences. According to Rob, the Too Fish is “my favorite in small and weak waves, but this shape is also thinned out aggressively in the tail to enable hold in powerful waves. I’ve ridden the Too Fish in everything from overhead waves on the North Shore to perfect days on the reef at home, and also the weakest most disorganized junk surf at the beach break in front of my house. This is my favorite board for all conditions.”
