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Cobra said.. obct said.. Well if you can wait until after Sunday night,I may be able to tell you because that's when I get given my 11 inch salty merchants fin for a B/day present.
knowing the way I ride, I doubt it will make a scrap difference

but I'm still excited
Keep us posted obct,,,I'm very interested, hope the big V post about his 11 inch.
Well, my initial thoughts in many ways reinforce what I already knew, but did not like to say, no, too big is not a good thing, yes, shape matters, but size matters more.
My rule used to be "use the smallest fin you can for any give situation", I'm more confident than ever that for a person like me, who's number one priority is to just get on waves, the less fin drag, the better off I am, and I suspect that there's a few other that are not unlike me.
It cost me $125 to find it out, and I'm now the proud owner of a next to worthless Merchants fins, but at least I now know for sure that my simple little $60 dolphins from Dion are as good or better than any trendy hipster fin.
I tried it in 2 boards, my all rounder on Saturday and then my nose ride on Sunday morning, both boards I know really well, I know exactly how they catch waves and what waves I can get and what effort I need to put into the paddle to get on board. I caught one wave on the Saturday and nil on the Sunday before I gave up, went it and put the smallest fin I could find into the all rounder and started catching waves.
Went back out this arvo with MR and the same small fin and blitzed it again, made a damn dirty pig of myself before a cramp set in.
Now it's very possible that this would be a tremendously good fin once I'm up and going on a clean uncrowded wave, but because it hinders me from getting past step one, how am I ever going to know? So next time I hear someone say "there's no such thing as fin drag" I can have I nice little chuckle to myself.
While I'm on the subject, there was something else I noticed only yesterday that may have escaped my attention in the past, those surf schools we all love to hate with their millions of beat up old foamies invading our beaches. You would have to agree that the success of a business like this is very dependent on the ability of the school to get as many of their customers as possible on waves and standing up, lets face it, would you go to a surf school where all you do it get sore shoulders from paddling with no result?
Well, there I was yesterday, sulking over my poor fin choice when I looked up at a bunch of school fomies lined up on the wall in front of me and I noticed something that I had never noticed before, every singe one of them had had the to outside fins removed. I wonder why