Pond tour next 2 weekends for the Chicago area

[CometKeith]

Here are some pond pics from the tour. I really liked the fish at this pond. We hand fed them cheerios!

 

[CometKeith]

Here are some pictures from Whispering Koi. There is a mud pond in the background. Half of the Koi in the pond are rescue fish.

 

[CometKeith]

My favorite pond. The owner also brews craft beer!

 

[CometKeith]

A deep pond with really big fish!

 

[CometKeith]

 

[CometKeith]

The trains were the main attraction at this pond!

 

[CometKeith]

 

[CometKeith]

This pond was hidden in the hills surrounding a house. It had waterfalls in the hills flowing to the pond.

 

[Fishylove]

Beautiful Keith! Wow I bet that was a great time. In the first pictures, the Chagoi and the Showa are very pretty. And that HUGE white one, seven pictures up?! Is he as big as he looks, or are the rest of the fish tiny lol. He's beautiful!!

 

[RobAmy]

Love all the pictures, thanks for sharing. it must of been a fun time. Did you have a favorite?

 

[DrCase]

Thanks for going on the tour

 

[Troutredds]

Great shots! Thanks for sharing. My wife is from Winfield - right by W. Chicago/Wheaton. I'd love to take that tour when we visit her family some summer.

 

[j.w]

That would be so fun to do! Thanks for sharing all those lovely pix Keith. That's nice what the koi whisperer lady does for all those rescue fish.

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks Fishy love. Yes the white one was very large. It's a little hard to remember where every picture was from because I went to 6 or 7 ponds every day. There are actually about 15-20 ponds open every day, but it is too much to drive to them all. Some are open at night and I think that would be fun too. From what I understand there are 320 members in this club and they have regular events all the time. http://www.mpks.org/ I probably need to join because I have met a lot of members because of the tours and everyone is very nice. There are more pond tours coming up this weekend. i got my wife to go with me on Sunday and I think she had a lot of fun. She didn't really know that much about Koi and one of the Koi at Koi whisperer tried to kiss her and we sent the pictures to all our kids and they had a good laugh.
RobAmy. Thanks. It's hard to pick a favorite because there was something really nice about every pond. I have goldfish so I really liked the more natural water garden settings with a lot of goldfish and maybe a few Kois mixed in but some of the all Koi ponds had absolutely spectacular fish so they were great too. There is one pond I really liked a lot that was 8000 gallons with really gorgeous fish and a bridge dividing that and a 2500 gallon pond. I didn't include pictures of that one because most of my pics were of my wife feeding the fish. I found a few and am including them in the next post. It was built so the the back 2nd floor bedroom/office had a picture perfect view of the pond and the man's wife said he is always looking out of the window at his fish instead of doing his work. lol. I think I liked that so much because it was really natural looking plus it had great fish. They had a cantilevered deck going over part of the pond.
Troutredds. The second day we actually started out in Wheaton. We saw a really nice pond there but I forgot to take pictures. I had seen it a few years ago and the owners recently had dug it up and changed all the rocks to mossy rocks. We drove through Winfield to go to other suburbs west of there so you probably know the areas we were driving around. We must of ended up at least 30 or 40 miles west of Chicago at the furthest pond because my gps said I was 1 hour away at the last pond. You should try to visit your in-laws in July to coincide with the pond tours! This is something everyone is welcome if you purchase the map so you should load up your family and take them with!
Thanks JW. Yes it's really nice what she is doing. The pond and all it's materials were donated by various individuals and companies. There is a large benefactor covering the cost of her programs in memory of their daughter. She is planning classes at a local junior college specifically about Koi and she is planning educational trips to Japan. She also has youth programs for kids with special needs. She is doing some really great stuff. Her pond is open to the public every weekend at no charge so it can be visited at any time.
Thanks Dr. Case I don't know if I'll go this weekend, but it was a lot of fun. I kept running into some of the same visiors on the tour at different places so it was very enjoyable meeting people and sharing pond talk. Some of the people I met were on the tour themselves and invited me to see them when they were having their pond open. I would definitely recommend this to anyone visiting the Chicago area in the summer if they don't mind a little driving!

 

[CometKeith]

I think this was my favorite pond even though they were all great. The had really pretty fish and it looked very natural. This is the one that we fed the fish by hand. The pond wasn't overly deep so you could see the fish well. I learned that the owners build a covering to go over their pond in the winter to protect it. The side of the pond you see has 8000 gallons and there is a bridge going between this and a 2500 gallon pond with goldfish and butterfly koi in it, but it is designed so it looks like it is all one big pond. A few of these pics might have been in other posts but I grouped them together to give a better idea how this pond looks.