Koi story

By Dorothy Foster

Correspondent

RICEVILLE, Tenn. — When Dan Womac’s granddaughter Savannah was young, she swam with the fishes, literally.

The koi at Womac’s Savannah Springs Koi Fishery would see her in the pond and make shark waves towards her in all directions, 25 or 30 at a time, according to Womac.

“They’d pass over her shoulder, brushing their fins against her cheeks, nibbling her. She loved it,” said Womac.

Womac also loves his koi, the Japanese name for ornamental carp. They are his enduring passion, he said.

During the Vietnam War he worked in medical evacuations, which entailed keeping a locker in northern Japan. Every chance he got, he traveled through the mountains there on his scooter. When the road gave out, he continued on foot, making his way toward a clearing that revealed men in diaper-like attire, mud up to their hips, tending to koi in a succession of terraced ponds.

“I became so fascinated by these beautiful fish and their bright colors that I determined to raise them myself,” Womac said.

Once back in the U.S. in 1974, that’s precisely what he did, or tried to do.

He bought a dozen koi, concreted a pond, and filled it with water, only to come back the next day to find the water gone and his beloved koi dead.

“I didn’t know concrete wouldn’t hold water,“ he lamented later.

The next time he used sealer, only to face dead koi yet again.

“The sealer was toxic. I was ready to give up,” Womac said.

But he kept at it and eventually succeeded.

One of only a handful of breeders in Tennessee, he now sells koi to clients from Maine to Louisiana.

With his girlfriend and business partner Debbie Penney, he oversees nine koi ponds. The different ponds separate the koi according to type and developmental size.

The koi can develop from a few inches to more than a few feet in size, Womac said, and it takes about four years for a koi to reach full maturity. After that, they can live for decades.

One particular koi, Kyoto, lived to be 28 years old, and became one of their favorites along the way.

“She was the matriarch of the group,” said Penney. “Now we have Pretty Boy, who is the leader. He’ll wiggle in our hands and eat peas from us.”

They take great pains to keep predators away from the koi, laying nets over the pond areas and keeping the water muddy so that birds and turtles can’t see the fish clearly. The mud also helps the koi’s breeding cycle, he said.

Feeding the koi is seasonal. Once the water hits 50 degrees around November, said Womac, the koi’s digestive systems go dormant, and they don’t feed them again until the spring, usually March.

Still intrigued by koi after all these decades, Womac and Penney are hoping to go to Japan next year.

“They have the best koi on the planet and the most expensive,” Womac said. “Besides, this is where my passion for the fish started, and it’ll be great to return.”

Contact correspondent Dorothy Foster via sending e-mail to derth1@hotmail.com.