How you feel about stand-up paddleboarding depends on where you are standing.

If you are one of the surfers who has taken to the sport in the past few years and are dipping your paddle into the water as you ride down the face of a breaking wave, you probably love it.

But if you are one of the people bobbing in the water on a traditional surfboard as one of the new behemoth boards zooms by on a wave you think should have been yours, chances are you aren't a big fan.

But that's just because you haven't tried it, says one paddleboarder — dubbed "sweepers" and other less kind monikers.

"Does anyone know this is fun?" said Shaun Patterson, a 48-year-old surfer who took to stand-up paddleboarding a few years ago. "It's kind of a bittersweet. I look forward to it, but I hate the vibe it's gotten."

The premise of stand-up paddleboarding isn't that different from regular surfing. From a mechanical standpoint, the main difference is the rider is on a longer, wider, fatter board, which he or she stands on and uses a long paddle to move through the water. While a bit bulky, they still catch waves like a longboard.

The unkind term "sweeper" comes from the motion the stand-up paddleboarders make as they move through the water. On days of bad waves, paddleboarders can still go out to get some exercise while the regular surfers sit on the beach.

Though SUP, as some call it, has been around for a long time in Hawaii, it's only in the past few years that it's made its way to California. It got a big boost when pictures of the god of big wave surfing, Laird Hamilton, started showing up with him tearing up the famed Teahupoo wave in Tahiti. He can be seen taking a cruise on his paddleboard near his Malibu home.

"If anyone else had brought it to town, it wouldn't have gone as far," said Joe Bark, owner of Bark Paddleboards and Surfboards.

Ventura board maker Steve Walden started making the boards about three years ago. On a good day of swell, stand-up boards started being spotted up and down the coast

But there was always one place where the sport never caught on: Ventura.

Perhaps it's because the Ventura coast is blessed with more waves, more often than other places and there is plenty of traditional surfing. Maybe it's because with their powerful paddles, the SUP guys can catch more waves than anyone else. It could have something to do with the fact that buying a new SUP starts around $1,300. Or perhaps it's something else.

"The bottom line is, whatever they're surfing on, one more surfer in the water is one too many," said Andy Conlin. "Do I sound cranky? No, I'm just one more surfer in the water."

Patterson thinks part of the reason the stand-up guys have gotten a bad rap is that they can steal waves if they don't follow protocol. With the paddle virtually acting like a motor, and on the long boards, they can catch waves earlier and farther out than anyone else. But, like everyone out there, Patterson said, the SUP folks need to follow the rules that have been around for decades.

The paddleboarders say surfers just need to try it, to see how fun it can be.

"I've gotten tons of rides on crummy days," said Jake Lombard, a 62-year-old stuntman who took up the sport in recent years.

"It's like anything new, people aren't going to like it," said Darren Douglas, who works at Ventura Surf Shop, where sales of the boards have picked up over the past three years.

Jared Poirot was a traditional long boarder until he tried one of the stand-up boards at Mondos Beach in Ventura. Though the waves were mellow, the wildlife was great, he said. He saw sand sharks and fish swimming around, things he'd never seen in his years of surfing there.

One of the advantages is just taking the boards for a long paddle even when there are no waves. Lombard will sometimes just paddle from Emma Wood State Beach to the Ventura Pier if there are no waves.

Walden thinks, though, that the stand-up paddleboards will eventually catch on in Ventura. He watched the same thing happen in Hawaii when windsurfing started to catch on and people trashed it as a new fad that took away from old-school surfing.

It's a just a matter of time, he said.