Morning Chris, Yes, it is becoming more common and the techniques have gotten very good over the last five years. It may be that the old days of using lemon juice and a knife are behind us and now dremal tools ( tiny power sanding and grinding machines really) along with skill and a surgical blade do a much better job.
When I judge fish I often see tell tale signs that something was done to a pattern. It is almost exclusive to kohaku and sanke. And it is 90% of the time a change in head pattern to make the fish more interesting or to remove menakuburi ( red all over the face that makes an other wise nice koi look plain and 'fish-like'). Often it is trimmed around the eye to make a circle of red rather than a mass of red. Or a cheek circle is carved out. Or the head pattern itself is make clean and attractive. Often the perfect horse pattern or an S or some other interesting shape is made on the head. And just as often it is a clean up and not a complete ‘redo’ of the head pattern.
The work is often not permanent and over time, you can see faint and then orange flecks reappear where areas of beni have been scraped away. If you look VERY closely, you will see white scars in these areas. And some patterns are simply not ‘natural’ to the trained eye. If you study your Nichirin magazines photos ( sorry Brain, Koi-Bito hasn’t been around long enough yet for this recommendation.
) you will see that over many years, certain interesting head patterns appear over and over. This is not surprising as genetics carries many repeated combinations over the generations. In fact I can show you an odd natural head pattern that shows up consistently over two decades in Rinko and Nichirin magazine and they are not the same fish! Or even the same breeder! Still, likely the same line. But even on the head of these patterned fish, there is a natural ‘imperfection’ to the edge of the pattern. A natural resolution to the kiwa and the surrounding shiro ground. After all, this is a very thin skin layer but very thick beni saturation. It is hard to hide ‘change’ there yet it is the easiest place to remove the dermis and epidermis without effecting scales, muscle or sashi/kiwa. And nicely, the head pattern is where the human eye tends to rest and draw opinion from as whether a fish is unique or not.
The other area ( remaining 10%) is the removal of secondary hi on the sides of the fish and the cheeks and gill plate of the fish. Just stray red that distracts from the main pattern and in a close competition will hurt the fish carrying it.
JR
05-14-2005
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