how about a good story lesson?

[dick benbow]

A few years back, a friend of mine asked me to keep my eyes open for a tancho kohaku for him. I was friends with the koi dealer back then and I would run to the airport and help him get the koi settled. it gave me first
look at everything that came in.

I agreed, and during the next shipment I spotted the perfect koi. It was about 13-14 inches in length, the white was a fabulous pink and the beni tancho spot perfectly shaped. I immediately had the koi held for my friend
as sold. well a few other koi club members were there and were horrified that i had picked something for hal (short for Harold) that looked like it was gonna die let alone be the best tancho of the several to select from.

bottom line was in two days the fish began to de-stress and the koi with the nicest white began to emerge. by the time my friend went to pay for the koi after q-tank, it was twice the koi the others were.

moral of the story: I had watched with every shipment select koi that were so much more stressed than thier shipmates that eventually after they readjusted went on to become the best ones, that I began to equate
the cause-effect relationship.

I'm not saying go to your friendly dealer and immediately buy all the koi that just arrived that are stressed out of thier minds!

but be a student who observes and learns. if you know what it takes to select a good koi IRREGARDLESS of who bred it, then your on your way to making better slections!

[jacovors]

Hi Dick,
A funny thing I noticed more than once while visiting ponds of people new to the hobby are their favorite fish.
Almost everytime the fish they think are the best in their pond usually is not. I have seen some nice fish in these ponds that the owner do not recognise for it's quality.
Jaco.
PS How are the fry doing?

[dick benbow]

I'll get a better look at the fry on saturday ( i'm writing you on friday night) I have a seminar on tosai selection.

speaking of looking at other people's koi, I went and saw Dan Blatt's sumi inagashi today. He's been off for awhile on the boards because a lightning strike did bad things to his computer (hence no posted pics of mine for another few weeks) when he emailed me pictures of three of them and asked me my opinion, she was nicely white with a few black scales here and there. now she is about 40% black. her eyes are black set in a white face, ingredible!


more blueberry tales tommorrow