Rob Machado and Sterling Spencer assume summer time shred strategies in California.

With summer officially in season and school a week or two away from being out, prepare for line-ups across Europe to be busier than ever as everyone heads to beach frothing to get their shred on again after the longest extended flat spell ever.

But as chaotic and busy as your local ends up being, remember there’s a few valuable tips worth bearing in mind to ensure you’re catching waves.

1. Ride a thicker board

This isn’t necessarily to say a longboard (although not riding a log at least a couple times a year is just doing yourself an injustice), but any shape with a bit more volume will give you that extra advantage over others in the line-up provided it’s still suited to the day’s conditions.

2. Don’t skip your surf check

Frothing harder than ever to finally surf again, don’t be tempted to just jump out where everyone else is going without looking at it properly. Take a good 10 mins to find out how regular the sets are, figure out the general surfing level in the water and come up with some kind of heat strategy.

If there’s a tight pack of locals dominating the sets, are there perhaps smaller inside ones that keep coming through unridden? At this busy time of year when surf etiquette has a strong tendency to fly out the window, it’s generally better to favour a strategy where you’re catching lots of waves rather than waiting ages for the bigger ones and then being dropped in on by 100 undiscerning kooks.