In recent posts we touched on some different types of longboard fins and what size might work for your board, but another important thing to factor in to your set up is where to actually place your fin.

Rather than give you a fish though, I’ll teach you how by sharing with you 2 things you should know about where to place your fin:

☝️ Generally speaking, you want to place your fin so that the tip lines up with the tail of the board (or close to it). This is a pretty common set up and a great place to start.

If you look back at tip 32 where we talked about upright vs raked fins, you’ll see that different types of fins will need to be positioned differently to achieve the same position relative to the tail (b/c some are more upright than others).

That said, this isn’t a hard and fast rule (nothing in surfing is). So start here, but play around with it to see what feels best for you. Which brings us to point no. 2…

✌️ Moving your fin forward (towards the nose) will make for a looser ride with easier turning, but will have less drive and less stability. Moving your fin back towards the tail creates more drive and more stability, but makes it more difficult to turn.

So just as with different board & fin design elements, it’s a tradeoff & ultimately up to you what you prefer.

Your fin box will almost certainly have some wiggle room to move the fin forward or back, so I’d encourage you to play around with it (seriously, please experiment!). You really only need to move it about a cm or so at time b/c a small adjustment goes a long way.

And if you want to swap fin position on the fly, check out @finjak (this isn’t sponsored or anything, just one of the better fin “screws” out there).

💬 Have you experimented with different fin placements? What’s your go-to tips or tricks?

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