Not the best or the best angle, but he wasn't being very cooperative. The Sumi has spread so far now it is hard to tell he ever looked like an Ochiba. You can see blue/grey base from the belly area and bronze/brown markings on the tail tube, left side, and face. I would say the sumi has spread another 10=20% since I started this thread last week.
Just to keep eveything in context, this koi hatched almost exactly 1 year ago and was first noticed as being black with a bronze facial "mask" outline. 2 others from the same spawn showed the same charateristics. During late summer the black began to recede from the belly upward giving way to blue grey, and as it continued upward the bronze leaf pattern began emerging. By late summer when some of the tosai were brought inside to overwinter most of the sumi was gone with a nice Ochiba pattern establishing itself. Now you can see that the Sumi has reasserted itself in a big way.
For reference to before and after, in the following thread;
Accidental Tosai Photos
The first three pictures in the bottom row show him late last fall after the original sumi had subsided and the normal leaf pattern had pretty well established itself.
05-03-2006
Now THAT would be a surprize... 
. Our private learning lab has been a lot of fun. We kept a few dozen from last year and gave a couple of hundred away to new koi-keepers who weren't ready to shell out long green on the front end of the learning curve. We kept a few sanke's and a pearl scaled yamabuki that have been interesting to observe too. No show champs but a great education already
Quote: 
Finally a Picture 
so there's a lot I've never heard of
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