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Our National Adventure!

Dear Readers,

My wife and I showed koi at the National for the first time this year, and it was such a great experience I wanted to write in and share our experience.

Who we are?

We are Adam and Amanda Byer, and we live in Buckinghamshire.  We are relatively new to the koi hobby, and have kept tropical fish for many years.

We inherited a 20 year old pond of 4400 gallons when we moved into our home 3 years ago, which we’ve renovated and subsequently built 3 temporary growing on/quarantine systems.

We’ve learned a huge amount about koi in a short space of time and still we’re only scratching the surface of the hobby.

Why show our koi?

We were starting to gain experience and confidence in koi keeping, and the idea of showing koi seemed sounded fun.

We’d never been to a koi show and our main concerns about showing koi were simply that we didn’t know how our koi would be cared for at the show and we had no experience of transporting koi, expect for when we brought them home from the koi farm. So I spoke to people who had shown koi and after some deliberation, we made a considered decision to go ahead.

We applied for vats at a few shows, and have been lucky to receive vat allocations at 3 shows this summer.  I was initially told there was no space at the National for this year andthat I would be on the waiting list and may get an opportunity next year.  Then, a few weeks before the show I was working away from home and Amanda phoned me to say we’d received a letter from Sue Ravenhill offering us a vat at the National.  I asked Amanda to scan and email me the letter which I read straight away and called Sue to check it was right.  Sue confirmed the offer and I wasted no time in saying as simply and calmly as I could -  “Yes”.  What a great day!

Koi we took to the show, and why!

We sought advice from Mark Davis at Cuttlebrook Koi Farm about how to approach showing, taking into account our level of experience and budget.  I approached Mark because we already purchased koi from him and Cuttlebrook koi have won lots of show prizes, so I thought that bode well.

In March we decided to buy some small koi, which would be easier for us as novice’s to handle and transport.  We bought koi outside of Go Sanke types, which meant we could afford several show quality fish that would give us a chance to take part, learn from the experience and hopefully win some prizes.

Bagging the koi

We took our koi to the show venue on the Friday afternoon, one day before the show opened to the public.

Mark Davis from Cuttlebrook kindly gave me some coaching on how to bag and transport koi, and I practiced the techniques in the week leading up to the show. So, on the Friday afternoon Amanda and I bagged up our koi and found the process fairly straight forward.

It took us about an hour and a half, and that included selecting our best koi, bagging them and putting the bags into polystyrene boxes.  We packed them in the boot of our car and started our journey to Stafford.

First experiences

Amanda standing by our vat.Three hours later we reached the show ground, parked up and walked into the main venue. It’s basically an exhibition centre with a large hall, balcony area and various other adjoining rooms. The scale of the venue, it’s prestige and the number of vats was immediately imposing. The vats were set up side by side in a chain that formed a rectangular-shaped ring.  Each one had it’s own lighting and a little wooden lectern standing next to the vat with a neat multicoloured “BKKS National” title and a vat reference number.  The lectern had a large blank space where organisers attach pictures of your fish and if you’re lucky, prize certificates are attached on the last day for everyone to see.

In the centre of the ring were some desks, several large vats of water, and some smaller vats – one with pink coloured water, which I learned was used to sterilise equipment. There were lots of important looking people wondering around wearing BKKS tops. The people in the centre of the circle of vats were going to look after our koi for the weekend.

Settling our koi in

We were welcomed on arrival, and asked to drive into the main exhibition hall and park next to our designated vat. Each person showing koi is allocated their own vat, and ours was vat number 14.

There is a team of people who look after the koi during the show – they are members of the Health Standards Committee (HSC). They asked us about conditions in the pond our koi had come from then asked us to float our bags in the vat. They observed the koi and basically took over looking after them from that point.  I got talking to one HSC member the following day who described how you qualify for the job – which included a series of exams and training over a couple of years; so I felt comfortable leaving my koi with these guys who seemed to me to be some of the most experienced and knowledgeable on koi health in the UK.

The bags were floated for around 20 minutes in the vat then two HSC people worked as a team to debag our koi.  One bag at a time, one person untied the bag and suspended it in the vat holding the top open and another HSC person reached into the bag and lifted each koi out in turn.  They said this was for bio security, and to keep pond water from our bags out of the exhibition vat.

Our Koi

Our koi looked great in the vat; they started shoaling straight away and Amanda and I looked at each other and smiled – we had succeeded in the first part of showing our koi at the National.

Before we left the venue we walked around the vats and saw some of the fantastic koi being brought to the show.  It was exciting to see the high quality, which was a taster for the next day.

The first morning of the show

The first thing we did was to tour the vats, stopping at each one and checking out the high quality koi on show. There were big ones, small ones, unique ones and the overall standard of koi was really impressive.

We planned on spending a few hours at the show but before we knew it, the whole day had gone and it was 4 o’clock; there was simply too much to take in during one day. And we still hadn’t looked at all the vats properly, and we hadn’t completed the mini competition Amanda and I set ourselves – which was to pick our favourites for all the main champions’ prizes, and see whether we got any results the same as the judges.

My one piece of advice for anyone going to the National for the first time is to take regular tea breaks!  There are a lot of vats and dealer stands to look at, and it’s easy to spend hours on your feet.

Dinner Dance

We went to the dinner dance on Saturday night, which was great fun. We were a little nervous about booking into the event because I didn’t think we would know anyone. But I’m glad we did because we got a chance to socialise and have a drink or two with people we met during the day and we found everyone very friendly and easy to talk to.  We had a great time.

Results morning

The following morning we woke up late – the price paid for a late night and the one or two beers I mentioned earlier. We were excited and keen to find out whether our koi had won anything and I received a text from Mark Davis at 10am asking whether Amanda and I had arrived at the show yet… this seemed positive…  why would Mark text me.., perhaps he’d seen our vat and we’d won some prizes.  Well, we were lucky and all our fish won a prize.  It was a great result and much more than we expected, so we were over the moon.  It was the icing on the cake.  We were really pleased for Mark too, as one of the fish he bred (owned by Martin Barnett) won baby champion which is a phenomenal achievement.

Settling the koi in back at home

We spent Sunday at the show and after another day of checking out the champions, the koi that beat ours and the koi ours beat, we started to pack up.  We learned a lot about koi appreciation by comparing fish that won different levels of prize, and by listening to a presentation by the judges on why each major prize winning koi had won.

Back to the practicalities of showing; packing up was exactly the same a packing to go to the show, just in reverse. The main difference was that I was able to use a new koi handling technique that one of the HSC team taught me during the show.

We drove home and floated the bags in one of our quarantine tanks.  Taking one bag at a time, Amanda held the bag open and I lifted each koi out supporting the koi from underneath it’s head and body just as I was shown by the HSC person at the show.  They all came out nicely, and I turned to Amanda and we both laughed – we felt like real professionals!  The next National can’t come around fast enough for us.

The last thing I want to say is a big thank you to everyone who had anything to do with running the show, and for looking after our koi so competently.  It was professionally run and that takes effort and commitment from lots of people.

Adam Byer
Koi Enthusiast