Visit to Shimizu-san - part 2 - Mud ponds

A large part of Shimizu-san's hobby is now the breeding of his own Koi.  We left the Koi houses to visit his mud ponds which, as you can see below, are equally if not more impressive than the Koi houses!

The netted ponds contain this years fry.  This year Shimizu-san has spawned 3 sets of Sanke and one each of Kohaku, Showa and Goshiki, a total of 6. Last year his production was 10 sets! 

The uncovered ponds contain nisai and oyagoi.

Shimizu-san is looking to produce just a tiny number of tategoi, many thousands of the fry he produces are given away to friends through the culling process which is extremely heavy.

As well as his mud ponds in Shiga Prefecture Shimizu-san also rents 4 mud ponds in Niigata, 1 in Mushigame and 3 in the mountains above Muikamachi, the same area as Masao Kato has his ponds.

The one below is his pond in Mushigame photographed from the road between the Nagashima filling station and Mushigame.  This pond actually caught my attention last year when I drove past it, it contained a very impressive selection of 2 year old Koi.

I've not looked in it closely this year and when I took this picture on Sunday the rain made it impossible to see its contents clearly.

We shared some very interesting conversation throughout the weekend, I'll provide some more info in part 3.