Steve Lis

Steve Lis developed the fish in San Diego's kneeboarding community in 1967. The starting problem was practical: swim fins dragged behind his pintail kneeboard. Working in his family's garage, he planned a compact outline around his body and fins, combining a broad split tail with twin keel fins. The resulting board brought speed and hold to the reef waves around Point Loma and Sunset Cliffs.

The original fish was a kneeboard. Jeff Ching's stand-up use of it helped reveal another direction, while local riders continued developing the design. Its influence later spread through competitive surfing and successive revivals of fish and twin-fin shapes. Lis's place in that lineage rests on a specific design solution, rather than ownership of every later board called a fish.