Fish pickin' at EnKoi . . .

[HEADACHE6]

I wouldn't have a Dime to my Name if I lived in Cal. !

Thank's for the Pics. .

[KoiCop]

Dick . . .

Which showa caught your eye?

Troy . . .

Buddy, can you spare me a dime???

[HEADACHE6]

Don , We mite be able to work something out .

No one asked , but from the Photo's , these caught my Eye .

[k.tran]

wow im gonna go stop by today...to bad i spent all my money on my coral tank

[dick benbow]

Here are a coupla things that caught my eye,
GR usually does not photo well, this one does which makes me feel it is very strong....

On my shiro's and showa's I look for black under the dorsal that will be a strong anchor for the rest of the pattern. I call it a saddle as it spreads across the back and down the sides.

I've had better luck with showa that has tight motoguro as Tosai that increases as opposed to full black pecs with only the leading ray white that has the black receeding.

if you break the pattern into thirds a tail,middle and head pattern all sections have 3 colors

It has a nice tail stop

while i don't see any black showing on the nose, the head has black and i think some things will attractively happen on the forehead with the sumi.

Here's one i chose from Toshio sakai as a Tosai

[KoiCop]

Here's a pic showing Gardena's Baby Champ (Kohaku) and Best Baby (GR Sanke) right after they were poured from Sakuma's shipping bag.

[Lam Nguyen]

You are a very lucky and talented guy, Don. Lucky because you live in an area with many koi dealers and talented because you are able to pick out BB & BC. I look at those koi and think that they are all pretty, and if you were to ask me to pick out the BB & BC from that group, there's no way I would have been able to do it......

[dick benbow]

I'm glad to see more and more interest in the tosai. Not so much because you can pick an instant winner but because you have an opportunity over several years to see the development which I feel helps you to better understand a breeder's koi. the difference I've found is that there are those who can pick winners right now out of a shipment and there are those that want to pick one that ends up in the same place only years down the
road. The last decade or so I have found myself among the latter half, having spent the previous years looking for now fish.
I think the biggest argument I've run across ( since i give seminars on selecting Tosai)
is that when tosai are sold they have been given up on by the breeder and therefore have lost any worth for serious consideration. I find this to be very wrong for many reasons.

I think the biggest enemy to learning for beginners and tosai is that they are often too ready to give up on them. Many serious Showa and sanke take years to develop their sumi.
It should be looked at with each selection, that a committment is being made for 3-5 years
to really understand what is possible.

for those of you that are kicking themselves for missing the sakai seminar, you have another great shot for learning. This september in Idaho, Sakai san will be back, along with Mat Mc Cann and looking now to confirm Kodama, all with instruction in a series of seminars during the PNKCA Convention. I'm looking forward to being a part of the continuing education.....you can find out more on the world wide web under the Pacific Northwest Koi Club Association.

[Lam Nguyen]

Great response, Dick. This post's going to be a jumble because I don't have much time to write and because I am just going to spill/brainstorm how I feel about this hobby as a whole, so here goes: the koi hobby as a whole does have limitations, contrary to what I used to believe when I first entered the hobby. Two of the many limitations that are on my mind right now are (1) a hobbyist with an average backyard pond of 8,000-20,000 gal, regardless of how often the hobbyist feeds or how pristine the water is or how sparsely stocked it is, will not be able to grow his/her koi to the maximum potential that Japanese breeders can with their grow-out Monterollite mud ponds in the same period of time, and (2) Japanese breeders will not depart with potential tosai because these tategoi are the ones that will put rice on their plates.

No disrespect to those in the hobby who buy nisai or sansai or older koi, but I really believe that the greatest reward is in raising a winner from when it is still a young tosai. While I still sway back and forth between purchasing tosai versus nisai or older koi, I would buy a tosai in a heartbeat if I knew that that tosai had potential and is one of the breeder's potential tategoi. I would then watch it develop under my care by giving it the optimal water condition, feeding schedule, and controlling all parameters so that I can give this koi the best environment/opportunity for it to fully blossom. This to me is the greatest achievement. However, the hobby doesn't work this way.....at least not to my knowledge and not yet anyways. Also, to my knowledge, the GC contenders are those koi that are going to grow big in a short number of years, and an average hobbyist cannot achieve this with tosai in their avg backyard pond.

Dick, you also brought up a good point about selecting tosai for several years down the road. However, these tosai are really rare to find, especially since most of the tosai are fed color-enhancers or their sumi or beni are finishing too quickly and the fact that most of them are males (I am starting to believe that ALL of them are males and that the breeders know that they are males). I, too, have been hunting for tosai for years down the road, but either because of the lack of experience or my luck, I have not found many.

Also, while it is easy to say that a hobbyist should keep his/her tosai for at least 3-5 years, I find it hard to do because I feel that my knowledge keeps on expanding, and with that, a need to find better koi to start over. Believe me, I am all for keeping koi for a long time to better understand its development, but when you only have a limited number of space in your pond and you want to continually upgrade your collection (human nature, perhaps?) I find it very hard to do.

Dick, in short, I am all for selecting and purchasing tosai. But as you can see, there clearly are limitations in doing so, especially when one aspires to have a GC koi/trophy some day. Anyways, just my thoughts/opinion.

[gspotmc]

Lam,
I understand where you are coming from when buying tosai. They are inexpensive. As for me I will only buy tosai for learning experience. It is too much of a gamble. A lot of things can ahppen to a tosai before it reaches its full potential. I have bought tosai that are worth $2k and so on there is not much success in growing them. I attain good growth but sometimes they change.