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Only the one ? treat it to a pair lol

TBH, I recon now the temps have eased off a bit the fish are up for a feed. I don't think they've been feeding much whilst it's been so bright and hot, not there's a bit of a breeze, the temps have dropped and we're getting occasional cloud cover, they've got to feed in some shape or other. If you're luck enough to be there when they switch on and can keep them in the area, you'll get a great result. I haven't been back to my local pond to check water temps since last weekend, but I hope they've dropped a bit and I hope the breeze has helped oxygenate the water a bit.

Despite the sweltering heat, I managed 20 fish on my days only park lake including a 16, 17 and two 18's. The average size was about 12 1/2 lb. As mentioned before, it's not normally that easy and by no means a pastie water. Despite the conditions screaming zigs or a small PVA bag approach, I went in totally the opposite and sent out the boat with spod mix and pellet at least every hour or after a bite.

Well it was a difficult weekend to say the least. I got the new/additional airlines in on Thursday night before going fishing on Friday night. Both of the fish that were struggling (a 68cm yamabuki (bright yellow/gold common) and a 60cm doitsu kohaku (white/orange mirror)) seemed to improve initially. The fishing was just savage in that heat on Friday so by 9am Saturday morning I was back home to check on the koi. The smaller of the two, the kohaku, was feeding and swimming around like nothing ever happened - a full recovery it seemed, but I couldn't spot the big yamabuki. At 10am, having still not spotted the yamabuki, I started work cleaning the filters. I still had my polarised sunnies on after fishing and I was taking a closer look at the fish from the filter house when I spotted one on its side on the bottom. I knew straight away which one it was and so it proved when I fished it out with the net. One of the best in there and certainly one of the most valuable... the yamabuki.... dead. Digging the grave in 35 degrees was not fun as you can imagine but that paled into insignificance compared to the pain of losing one of my favourite and most valuable koi. I'm a member of several koi pages on social media and it seems all over the country people are losing fish despite following all the right procedures. My water parameters are fine and I have tonnes of oxygen going in. There's not much more I can do. I'm hoping this drop in temps does us all a big favour but I know that we're heading back up to 30 degrees after next weekend. I've increased the frequency of my water changes in an attempt to bring water temps down so that should help a little. So basically it turns out winter is a doddle compared to summer when it comes to keeping koi. I knew that high temps introduce risk for koi but I genuinely thought I was prepared for it. Let's just hope that that's the end of the serious problems.