The early blokes catch the koi - seems to be our motto for this trip! We arrived at our first farm to the breeders surprise at 7-30am. They were harvesting but we still managed to select some nice patterned Hi Utsuri. Once these were photographed we moved on to our 10am appointment.

Saito fish farm is a very small breeder who tries many varieties along with his usual Kohaku. We always manage to select a few koi here and he is always happy to discuss his koi bloodlines in detail.

A return to Hasegawa was the next stop and we successfully managed to persuade Hasegawa San to release some Tancho and Kohaku that he wanted to keep earlier in our trip - We were very happy with this.

After a quick Pork ramen we made our way to our last farm - Marusaka. We waited over 2.5hrs for the harvest to arrive, But when it finally did, it was worth the long wait. We selected some super Doitsu Kohaku, Beni Kikokuryu, Kikusui plus some very unusual gin rin Sakura Ogon. The light was starting to go by now so we opted return tomorrow to photograph this selection