Friday 28th March 2008.
This morning I setup the pumps to empty mud pond 3 so I could catch the remained of the large koi. Before I started pumping down, I pulled the seine net through one last time. I caught another 40 large koi and numerous small one which were not counted, this was a surprise, but pleasing all the same as if I had not netted the pond again, these would have to have been carried out in a bowl when the pond was drained.
The pumps were started and I carried on with my chores, one of which was to pull up a couple of the koi harvested yesterday and give them a scrape. I found quite a few white spot and a few trichodina. This was expected as the water has been warming up and a few have been seen jumping.
Just after lunch a truck pulled up, it was a delivery of boxes for the open weekend, on unloading them it was obvious they had spent sometime in the rain and many were sodden. In all 55 out of 200 were damp, I'm told I will get a credit for the rain damaged ones!
At 6pm the pond was drained enough for me to get in and remove the final koi. I had sat for 3/4 hour waiting for the last of the water to drain down and it soon became obvious that there were only two koi in the pond, one a shiro utsuri which jumped the net in the morning and a kohaku which skipped the netting.
That was a good result and made the end of the day much easier than I'd expected.