Duotone Pro Fish

There’s no disputing who is top of the tree when it comes to riding waves with a surfboard: Duotone have dominated the GKA wave tour for the last few years, so it is no surprise that they take their surfboard line up more seriously than most. There have been some tweaks to the lineup, but the core range of boards (WAM, Whip and Session) have been at the heart of it for several seasons now. So, when we got to check out the new lineup, we were pretty surprised to see an all new addition… The Pro Fish shakes things up and promised to inject some more ‘fun’ into your session. Mirroring the surf world, the Pro Surf acknowledges that volume is your friend if you are riding in subprime conditions and also – specifically to kites – if you want to get going in lighter wind, or if you want to drop a kite size compared to your pals. So the largest of the Pro Fish models packs 29.5 liters into its 5’5 (which is over 3 liters more than the 5’11 Pro Session!). The outline has a full nose and a wide tail which is where the extra foam is distributed, then the Pro Fish has relatively narrow rails which come into a ‘grab rail’ before stepping up into the center of the board, enabling some more foam to be tucked away here. The entry point is wide and the tail provides plenty of width and volume to enable you to maintain momentum even when the wind or the wave runs out of steam.

On the water and the Pro Fish takes you back to the days before decent wave-specific kiteboards, where you either had the option of riding an insanely heavy kiteboard or of using a lighter but more voluminous surfboard and hoping you wouldn’t snap it on your first session. The extra volume enables you to get up and riding and to power around without being overly dependent on the kite – as soon as you’re up you have plenty of momentum and float and can focus on spotting sections to destroy. The thruster set up enables you to carve the Pro Fish around and then drive off the bottom and into a section and – whereas more ‘performance’ oriented surfboards would see you get bogged down – the Pro Fish keeps floating and maintains speed through even the sloppiest of sections. It really is a super fun and forgiving board to ride and can hold an edge in more challenging conditions, although the ethos of the Pro Fish is definitely around smaller onshore days when you just want to get out and not have to work too hard for your waveriding rewards.

In a sentence: In a world where there are 101 different options for twintips, it’s great to see Duotone bringing that approach to their surfboards and producing a board that really does offer something completely different…