CKP - AKCA Seminar 2009

est. 1995

outings & events: akca seminar 2009

San Diego 2009
February 11 - 16
It has been a long time since I attended an AKCA Seminar, to be exact 8 years, the last one being in Houston in 2001. The seminar typically occurs in June which is our busy season and I just can't afford to be away at that time of year

When I discovered the seminar would be held in February this year I knew I had to attend. Mike Poplawski, who started with us last spring, was very excited to come along and we had a great time while and learned a lot as well

The seminar itinerary is as follows. Day 1 is a tour day for those who would like to see some of the local sights. Days 2 and 3 our lecture days and on the final day, Sunday, are the pond tours

On Friday the seminars began. There were 3 streams so to speak - koi, ponds and 101/interest with these themed lectures taking place concurrently. I pretty much stuck to the koi stream. Mike attended some of the pond streams and filmed 5 of the lecture I didn't see. I'm in the process of watching them now

Day 1 Lectures
To start things off for me, Galen Hansen led a koi slide judging talk which was great. I was on a real role ranking the fish correctly but lost it on the asagi/shusui slide. the consensus number 1 fish was an asagi, I had it placed lower due to a lack of sheen on the head and not very pronounced reticulation. Live and learn is the name of the game with this hobby

Ray Abel filled out the first day for me with 2 lectures as he discussed raising koi in mud ponds and selecting good fish. I'm a big fan of Ray's and I have attended his last 4 mud pond harvests which occur every year in Midlothian, Virginia. If you want to see a huge number of show quality koi, Ray's is the place to be


The Koi Club of San Diego Koi Show was also part of the event	A solid Showa Sanke but lacking some sumi on the head	A group of small koi from the Annual Breeders Show	Mike was certainly impressed with these 2 gosanke	We visited the San Diego Zoo on the first day, the Flamingos really put on a show for us	Balboa park was pretty impressive, we squeezed a quick visit there before we caught our flight home

Videos

More Lectures
Saturday was another slate of interesting lectures. They included:

Selecting Non-Gosanke Tategoi
Open Veterinarian Forum
Koi Disease and Treatments
Joe Zuritsky talked and his koi breeding operation
Growing Jumbo Koi

The Growing Jumbo Koi lecture had a great pace with 3 different speakers supplying anecdotal observations. I feel this type of information has great credibility because it's coming from those who have actually "done it"


There was a long day of koi judging with 2 shows going on	One of the nicer ponds from the pond tour. This was a nice pond in a beautiful courtyard	A very natural looking waterfall with nice stone	Another nice pond on the pond tour. This pond had a flow through bay filter system	Myself and Darren Lucas in front of the USS Midway. The Midway has to be the 8th wonder of the world	Incredibly beautiful birds at the San Diego Zoo

Final Comments
This was a great event and a lot of work to present. I learned a lot and love watching the lectures videos over again because there are always things you missed or have forgotten. My only complaint would be that there was really too much going on ! Yes, if that can even be a complaint that would be mine. I wanted to see all the lectures and go on the pond tour. That just left very little time for speaking with vendors and taking in all of the koi at the 2 koi shows. With 3 lectures gong on most of the time, I'm sure some people were torn as to which on to see. I'm glad Mike was along and we filmed most of them, so each of us can watch the ones we missed which is great. I'm hoping the AKCA will present another Winter time seminar in the near future

Created : March 22, 2009
Last Modified : Sept. 30, 2009