Grant Newby is a backyard board builder from the Gold Coast. He has an abiding interest in 'alternative' designs, the fish surfboard in particular. Grant's design curiousity led him online to meet other like-minded shapers and eventually to start the Alley Fish Fry - a non-competitive, non-corporate gathering where shapers and laymen alike can meet and talk.

Swellnet: This is the fifth year for the Alley Fish Fry, is that correct? Grant Newby: Yep. This is the fifth one. I'll be honest, I didn't know how much more legs the Fish Fry still had but this year there's been real interest from the younger guys. There's a lot more younger guys that are into music, art, surfing, or expressing themselves in their own way and they dont give a rats about pro surfing or any of that. Look how many new surf labels are starting up, like Critical Slide Society, or shops like Sugarmill down your way. They wouldnt have even existed five years ago, would they?

No, it seems that in the last few years there's been a renaissance of backyard shapers and the fish design has been the catalyst for this renaissance. I think that that's true. The resurgence of the fish...and look, I'm not a great surf historian, I'm just an enthusiast, but the fish is the first board from the past that people decided to re-investigate it's roots and take a look at through modern eyes. People bought second hand fishes and thought they were fun because they allowed surfers to ride small, wider boards on fat days.

The guys who picked them up, the innovative and creative shapers that got a hold of them, thought 'this is an interesting little project.' And so a number of people picked up older designs and figured that the shapers of the day moved on from shorter boards fairly quickly and never fully developed or explored the potential of the shape, you know?

The result is that aspects of the high performance boards they had been shaping were then combined with the fish, which created a very versatile board that filled in a lot of the gaps that were missing.

They say one should never wallow in nostalgia, but the fish was one time that it paid dividends to look backwards, didn't it? Yeah. But it didn't take long for the people who revisited the fish to get the shits with those who were saying it was a retro revival. Because what they were actually shaping was something that was quite a departure, or step up, from where the fish left off. So it wasn't a retro revival at all.

So in effect there was a twenty year gap in the development of the fish? Yeah, from the mid-70's to about the mid-90's.

And many of the fish getting shaped now are modern boards? Yeah. And I think you've got to attribute the quad fin revival to the fish as well. Four fins started getting attached to fishes first, and now they are on shortboards as well. I think that came about from the same experimentation that was going on with the fish.

It leads me to ask the question, when is a fish not a fish? We've seen thruster setups, quad setups, what's your personal criteria? Well I think two or four fins, three is still a thruster. To me, if you see somebody with a swallowtail, fish-ish sort of board and it has three fins in it, to my unqualified eye that's saying the guy who placed the fins covered his arse by putting one in the middle to tidy up his inaccuracies or lack of knowledge. Or then maybe it's marketing ploy to appease the customer? Cover more bases...

A hybrid: hybrid thruster, hybrid fish. Without being either one... It falls into no-mans land which, to me, means it's not a fish.

What about length? When is a fish too long? I dont think a fish can be too long. I've got two ten footers and a 9'6

How do they go? Unreal. They're all quads. I've got one that's stained, with an eight-mil Paulownia stringer that's all carbon fibre and it's a quad fin fish. I call it Quadzilla. And Dick van Straalen has made plenty that are in the nine to ten foot range for Rasta. Rich Pavel, Josh Hall and Skip Frye in the States, and Darren Miller too, they've all made big fishes in the ten and even eleven foot range.

So the development continues? Yeah, and then some of those same guys are making boards that are just 4'10". Like mini-Simmons'.

So do Simmon's twins fall into the camp? Are they welcome at the Alley Fish Fry? Yeah, for sure. The fish is a planing hull and the mini-Simmons is definetely a planing hull. I built myself a ten foot Simmons just before Christmas. I've only ridden it once 'cause we haven't had great surf. The Simmons, there again, is a revival of a design that has been tweaked to create a very versatile and intriguing board.

Do you think there's room for development in the Simmons? Such as there has been with the fish? Yeah, I think there's many different interpretations of it already. That's what Jordan Nobel, from Note Surfboards in Victoria, that's what he's into. I've got him as one of the speakers at the Surf Museum on the Saturday night. I've also got a guy, Ryan Lovelace, from Point Concept Surfboards in Santa Barbara, speaking. He shapes mini-Simmons, hulls and fishes.

You mentioned that you've shaped a few boards yourself. Do you have your own boards on display at the Fish Fry? Yeah, I showed fifteen boards last year.

There's been a few pros shaping their own boards lately. Yeah, hats off to Slater for getting in and shaping a few boards himself. Dane Reynolds too - he's shaped a few boards. Those guys experiment with a few things and they come up with a different point of view with what they can have fun on. I think the fish has influenced a lot of good surfers into going shorter and wider. After surfing fishes they realise that it doesnt have to be a 6'2 thruster.

It's certainly a different design climate than 10 or 15 years ago. Absolutely, but you've got to give credit to the innovative guys like, like say Dick van Straalen, who've been delving into the fish for way longer than most people, and also experimenting with different materials.

The Fish Fry is a bit of an unusual beast within surfing. Well it's non-competitive and it's non-commercial. Those two things are very unique in the surf industry or the sport of surfing.

The other things is, it's a day for the shapers. You see, most shapers are not the most, let's say, personable people out there. You know, they spend most of their time with an iPod jammed in their ears, with masks on working away on their own. A lot of them, in the initial stages of the Fish Fry, came down and stood back. There were guys that worked in the same suburb, knew each others boards, yet had never met each other. They'd come up to me asking, 'Oh, is such and such here?' I'd be, 'Yeah mate, thats him over there,' and they'd want me to introduce them!

I found that sort of thing quite common at first, but now a lot of shapers, when they get to the Fish Fry, they talk openly. The first year I had it I knew shapers that were there but never brought any boards 'cause they didn't know what the hell it was all about. They were so skeptical that you could get shapers together and that it was actually about them. And it took till about the third year that they realised, 'Hang on, this is about us.'

And the council is OK with you taking over the park? To be quite honest, I went the council route and chased them down, but they were so slack and have no idea so now I dont even bother. I applied for a license to do it and I had to keep chasing them up and then they finally sent me a thing saying I had to have a $100 million worth of public liabilty insurance. So one of the ladies I work, with her husband is an insurance broker, I asked him to get me three quotes for the insurance and they all came back saying, 'Whose insuring who against what? You're in a public park for Christs sake. You pay your rates, you can go and have a picnic and if a 100 people turn up then so be it'. So I brushed the council.

Well good luck with the Fish Fry, I'd like to hear how it goes. Thanks. I must admit I'm still intrigued by the whole thing. When it first started I didnt know anything about blogging and the internet and all that. But now people have come from all over the world, literally, just to meet in the park and look at surfboards. Some of them have never been to Australia before and they turn up in a van with some surfboards and a girlfriend and we go for a surf. Some of these people, it's just from emailing them. That's the power of enthusiasm. It's pretty hard to beat, isnt it?

The Alley Fish Fry is on Sunday the 6th of March in the park at Currumbin. There is also a talk the night before at Gold Coast Surf Museum. All details are available here.