Today I harvested a pond of tosai I call my New Age Showa, 3.5 months old at this point. This is a branch of my Showa gene pool that I began in 1999 with the blending of Takeda Showa and Sadazo Sanke. Nine years later I’m at the 3rd generation of that cross, and am seeing some of what I wanted to see - a longer leaner body shape consistently in the fry, stepping away from the ‘old school’ body of traditional Showa - even and solid hi plates more consistent with Sanke and Kohaku at this age - and a consistency in the sumi, it’s deep, with sharp edging and laquery qualities, as well as tight balanced motoguro, and the sumi tends to fall in the white areas where it can show itself well, but when it does cross paths with the hi plate the sumi has the depth and strength to cut through cleanly.

In 4 more years with the next generation I expect to have a good amount of consistency in this line.

I’ll post updates on the Showa/Magoi line I’m working on, and tosai from my standard Showa pairings as harvesting continues here at Lotus Land Koi Farm.








-- Edited by Lotus Land Koi Farm at 12:54, 2008-09-18