Tosai Selection
by Dick Benbow

One of the hardest things a Koi keeper can do is stand by his favorite breeder or dealer’s newest shipment of Tosai and not be drawn into the search for the “ultimate” pattern. After an hour or so of peering into the sales vat, your eyes begin to cross and you slowly begin to comprehend that what you have had in your mind and what your eyes are beholding are two different things!

Rather than get discouraged, let’s set about learning how to select tosai. Tosai is a Japanese word, which explains that the Koi is within a year of age and did not make the final cut. Those brothers and sisters that did make the cut are called Tategoi, the breeder selected those and they will be grown on again for another year.

Once selected as Tategoi that does not mean that their meteoric rise to the top could not be cut short at the next harvest when the farmer once again reviews his subjects. My point here is that just because a Koi did not make the cut does not mean that it cannot contribute to our learning curve or provide our pond with an interesting subject to enjoy for many years.

It’s All in the Planning
It’s human nature to go to a dealer or breeder with a preselected color variety in mind. It’s almost Murphy’s Law that you are now doomed to never find what your looking for! The secret to learning is to go with an open mind and pick the best fish available. For football fanatics this amounts to the draft when the pros are looking for a tight end but when their turn comes to select, that prospect has already been drafted.

So let’s proceed with “the standard plan” and move forward. In this installment, we’ll look at something less complex as say the pattern of a Showa. Let’s say that today we are looking for a Yamabuki Ogon and for convenience we begin looking in the pond that fits our budget on this particular occasion. Whether your dealer is needed to assist you or you are allowed to handle their Koi yourself, place all of the prospects into the same blue tub. If the light inside is not sufficient to see, ask if you can move these Koi outside. Take along an additional blue tub with water in it where you will place those that are being rejected.

What Do You See
Begin your search by looking first at body confirmation. This is always rule number one, regardless of what color variety you are selecting. With the Yamabuki Ogon, you must pay special attention to the shape of the head and to the size of the pectoral fins. Yamabuki Ogon can have flattened faces, which are proportionately to short; this is also called “dolphin heads”. This refers to a forehead that is actually longer than what it should be. Take all of the Koi from the first tub that don’t meet our requirement place them in the “rejected” bowl.

Next order of business is to look for undersized pectorial fins. The fish with obviously smaller fins should be removed. There! Now you are beginning to narrow the numbers and make some progress.

Next I want you to look at the overall length of the Koi. Picture the length of the head in your mind and see that there are at least 41/2 head lengths in the body from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail. Every once in a while you will find one that is to short and that one is destined to grow up looking more like a football than a Koi (That’s an American football by the way).

Now We Are Getting Somewhere
Once we have gotten by the basics, body confirmation and face shape, we need to check and make certain that the spine is straight. By watching the Koi swim you can see if the spine is curved. As the fish swims toward you take a look and make sure the head itself is straight and not slightly off center. This can be difficult to spot till you have it pointed out one time, once you see it, you can identify this trait again much easier. It will be especially important to detect when selecting Showa, which have a tendency to have this fault. Normally as a Koi grows the misshaping becomes more pronounced, so it is best to catch it now.

At this stage the numbers to select from have dwindled, which makes the next selection a bit easier. This time we are looking for the sheen or what I like to call “opalescense”. A Yamabuki Ogon is what the Japanese call a “Hikari Koi”, meaning it has brightness to it. This is the reason why we wanted to make the selection outside in the sunlight so it’s easier to detect this blueish radiance. Check the forehead to make sure the color is even and not irregularly discolored and you should be down to just a few Koi. Usually the lightest, biggest one at this stage will be the one you want to end up with.

Be sure and check your new selection under the belly for injury or infection. You can do this by having the Koi rolled over or simply inspecting it in the plastic bag.

Congratulations! You have, threw reason and understanding, picked the best available Koi for this variety. Although you choose a Koi that did not have a pattern that influenced your decision making, you have learned some basics that will be standard to all Koi. So from this day forward, you know to first make sure that the body itself is in good shape. I know your saying to yourself …”well. Duh”…. but believe me when I say that sometimes patterns can easily be distracting and you cannot take this critical task for granted.

Dec/Jan ‘07 - Subscribe now!