i got a phone call from shawn mchenry, hesaid he had a really special fish to talk about in our koi discussions videothis week let's go inside and see what he has instore for us. shawn! eric! awesome to see you man. great to see you man. i love these koi discussions. they're the best.
snake river farms wagyu beef, okay you told you have this amazing koi,i'm here to see it. tell me about it. alright, so i have with us today about, i think an eight-year-old nogami taisho sanke
my customer, a very special customer of mine, asked for a very, very special fish and i have it. it's for a koi show isthat right it? it is, it is. it's coming up this weekend and this fish is at eighty threecentimeters, so around thirty- four inch sanke. she's big. she's big. and not only is she big but she's beautiful. let's get her in a bowl! yeah, yeah absolutely man. she's so big, she doesn't even come close to fitting in my net she's a monster.
alright so, obviously she's huge right? yeah. we can see that. but that's not whatmakes her special. what makes her special is that she's huge,and she still has all the qualities of a young baby fish. likeher white is pure, pure milk. i mean she's smooth and silky, when you say just asif she was a young fish. so how old is she? she is around 8 years old. eight... and her red, is that nice deep red and a lotof times older fish get sort of, their red sort of fades away and itbecomes a real, grimy orange
and we can see the black on here is it's like ink. yeah, it's like ink andthey're still it still coming up! so again it's as if thisfish was just a two or three year old fish, butreally is massive. it's massive. you know from my understanding itsusually three to five years maybe seven years they might finish out. correct. not the case for her.not the case with her at all. and that's rare right? yeah absolutely! and the most difficult thing is to get fish
to have that red climax, the white climax and the black climax, all the same timeand it'll do that sometimes but it'll be when the fish is this big (hand gesture small) right? in order to get this crescendo to happen on a such a massive fish, its, imean highly unlikely. i mean it's like one in a billion sort of chance. one ina million? one in a billion. a billion! yeah absolutely. that's awesome. it's absolutely so rare.
just look at the skin quality here, lookat the... it just like shines. so obviously, she's a huge, beautiful 32 inch fish, but what makes her so interesting…. is, is the dynamic qualitiesshe has, she has a awesome pattern. there is this reallyinteresting face pattern here and then boom, boom, boom, nice, nice actually four steps if you look at it actually 5 steps. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 oh yeah. it's pretty, pretty awesome to find a five-step kohaku
right? and then put black on it and make it a sanke. she has absolutely perfect confirmation. usually when fish are this big, you start to see little kinks theirbody where... where they maybe had a bad spawning one year. oh right... and so, they have this long spine thatget outta place. she's absolutely perfect straight. and thats…thats... to me, when the most important things about caring for fish and admiring itsconformation then… the red
the white and the black have all sort of,climaxed all the same time and to get that to happen is a so-so rare... and to have it happen on such a large fish it's like all these cool things come together at the sametime to make this absolutely beauty. and do they start spawning her? at what age? she's been spawning for themof course right? no, no, not at all! no she's just been a show fish. no, not ashow fish but just in his mud ponds growing. so he hasn't use this as a breeder atall. very interesting to know.
i've actually gotten a couple guysalready who have, who have seen this fish, who are interested in, once she retires, put out to pasture and see what kindaeggs she can produce. so shawn this is reallyinteresting to me, i didn't realize that if the breeder sees the potential fora grand champion they do not want to breed her, is thatwhat you're telling me? oh yeah, absolutely! they don't want to breed until…. why is that? well, there is several thingsgoing on.
believe it or not, a breeder typically isn't me most beautiful fish.what we're looking for in breeding, and every koi breeder in japanhas different opinion oh what's a good male-female breeder. but they're oftenlooking for the volume of eggs she can carry, andcertain traits in their bloodline this fish, is a show fish. so it's…. its main purpose iscomplete, like absolute beauty. so, if you were to breed it and she were to losesome scales,
or get bruised, or get stressed, you knowbreeding is a pretty stressful thing and we don't what this fish to see anystress ever. you… you went to get this fish you went looking for this fish! i wenthunting for her. hunting? right! so your client says, i wanna be in a show, i want a chance towin. absolutely! okay. and so i'm actually judging akoi show in japan. the nagaoka nogiosai and….i am a judge, pretty cool right? yeah. and we're going through here
and we go to pick our champion. right? i vote for this fish. this fish and another kohaku, end up getting right around the same amount of votes.right? we go back and we have to revote, so we try to get one that has a majority, a significant majority, and the... thebreeder nogamison, he bred this sanke, wellturns out he also bred the kohaku. so this guy, no matterwhat, is going away winning grand champion and reserve grand champion. he's is also a judge at the show
and he's like, guys i'm gonna be honest with you. both my fish are gonna win. i'm a kohaku breeder. i think that kohaku looks better. howabout you guys? ha, ha. and so so of course, a couple other guys startvoting for the kohaku. right…. and so the kohaku actually wins grandchampion. but if you ask me, in my opinion, this snake was the bestshow, the best fish of the show right. so she took "reserve" at that big show? yeah. which was great for me! because if thiswas "grand champion", she would of cost me a lot more money! ha,ha, ha, ha….
and your client right? yeah! absolutely,absolutely! wow, she's really special. shawn this is stressing me out just seeing her in the bowl. let's let her go, i don't want her in the bowl anymore! absolutely, absolutely! how much does she weigh? too much man, too much!that was awesome, man!!!! i feel really honored that you called me to come and see this fish. absolutely! i couldn't let a fish it's very rare that a fish like thiscomes to america and i knew you'd love it,
so, i had to have you out here to check her out. you know it's like the art. this is like the van gogh of the, youknow of the koi.that's what we're talking about. that's why we're doing these koi discussions videos to expose people to thetrue beauty behind that. real, real treasure. man thank you verymuch! no problem man. have a great day. i'll see ya…..
wow what an amazing koi. it's notevery day you get to be that close to a sixty thousand dollar koi! special thanks to shawn mchenry at mystic koi for having us out.
i'm eric triplett the pond digger, thanks for watching.
