Well I worked on the ponds for six+ hours on Saturday and everything is now winterized. I still have to put the pumps in, remove the netting and put the on the solar covers. The trees in my neighborhood still have leaves on them. It was windy yesterday and they were falling like crazy. We are supposed to have wind and rain today. Hopefully that'll help.

Here is the final head count for the 2010 ponding season.

Top pond:

Since this was the last pond to winterize I was going to leave it till spring, but fumble fingers McGoo dropped the pruning shears in while pruning the water lilies. Upon draining the top pond I found ten six/seven inch koi, so I put them in the big pond to overwinter.

Settlement pond:

I found twelve 2-3 inch butterfly koi. Two were platinum ogon, and one was a beautiful gold ginrin. I placed them in a bucket and called the pet store who rescued the ones I couldn't find homes for this summer. They said, "sure bring them up, we'll love to have them." Oh no, should I keep the beautiful yellow butterfly? Like I need another koi in my pond. I had to make a quick decision. When I walked through the door of the pet store that is the first fish the owner wanted. He has a 3 acre farm pond and rescues unwanted koi. He told me I could have my pick of any koi in the pond next spring. I thanked him and told him I had already have more koi than I can handle. He told me the Metroparks just contacted him and they rescued a 3 ft koi from the park ranger someone caught while fishing. He said it was huge and beautiful. Sometimes I get stuck on stupid. He would have gladly taken the larger koi I found in the top pond. Oh well, I didn't know this beforehand. All they have in the store is a 75 gallon pond. In addition to the koi I found two dragonfly larvae and ten leopard frog tadpoles. These were placed back into the settlement pond after I drained it and filled it to clean out the bottom of the large pond.

Skippy filter:

One seven inch white koi with black spots that I threw back into the large pond for the winter.

My plan for next year is to drain my large pond to remove the fry from this summer. I made arrangements with the owners of the pet store to take them. All I have to do is schedule a date they are able to drive the koi to their rescue farm. I don't even want to think about that till next spring. I just hope everyone makes it through the winter. I made arrangements to get supplies and wh/wl with the pet store in exchange for the koi next spring.

Jenny