From the 1st line of the story:
A Tracy man came home from vacation to discover 150 to 200 small koi fish vanished from a backyard pond. By James Utt.
150-200 . . . 150-200! how can anyone think it’s a good idea to keep that many fish in something so small? What is he thinking? A little further down in the story:
Someone must have stolen his fish.
The last line of the story, where he had just mentioned calling the sheriff:
Schubert has lived in his Tracy home for 10 years and said he has never had anything stolen before.
Then there is one other quote I’d like to point out:
“I’m just at a loss for words,” said Schubert, hunched over his fishless koi pond Monday. “It’s kind of comical, you know Who would do this”
Schubert said that despite his location near the countryside in southern Tracy, he has yet to spot any large predator, a raccoon or a fox for example, since he moved in.
Raccoon’s would have left physical evidence behind, foxes . . . I have yet to hear of such a thing. Do you pond experts know where I am going with this?
Especially when he talks about going to the sheriff . . .
It’s going to be tough to lock up the local Heron . . .
I still can not get over the size of the pond . . . and at that size it cant be very deep. A Heron would have stood there and just gorged himself-easiest meal of his/her life. I am really surprised that no one mentions any type of predator bird in this story.
But the size of that pond . . 150-200?
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*The photo is from the Tracy Press, in Tracy, CA.
The Whispering Crane Institute 
My cynical mind leads me to think they were just goldfish. Now that they’re stolen, they’ve been upgraded to koi, for insurance purposes.
I love the “arms spread in shock” pose.
He should just keep restocking it and call it a heron pond.
Let’s see. Local pet smart. Comets @ .12 each = ~$24. Small koi at ~$5 each = $1K. I hope he saved his receipts, ’cause any pet store would remember a purchase like that.
My fish pond is similar sized, only we’re within spitting distance of a huge wetland where we see herons all the time. We’ve only chased a couple out of the fish pond, and haven’t had any major losses that we’ve been able to tell. Last year’s 3-inch koi are getting up close to a foot long. So it’s got to be tempting for them.
Heck, I’d have taken the poor things, just to save them from overcrowding. It doesn’t look any too clean, either! But you’re probably right — that heron must’ve thought he died and went to heaven!
A friend of mine with a small pond in Charleston had a terrible time keeping the neighbor’s cat from getting his koi – they would literally catch the cat scooping up a fish – and ‘catching it’ with it’s claws.
I have a pond that’s not much bigger than the one pictured and it holds about 1000 gallons but only 4 legitimate koi, I had 5 but one jumped out in the rapture of spring and a few shubunkins and comets. At 3 1/2 feet deep my pond looks definitely deeper than his. You can tell his pond is not very deep because a square plastic planter is not very tall and it’s edges are sticking up above the water. So his water depth must be only 16-18 inches at the most.
Where would he get 150 -200 koi?
I saw a great blue heron circling our neighborhood last week. I guess it was reconnoitering good fishing holes.
I totally thought of the heron first… but only because I figured that even though that pond seems horrendously dirty, if the fish had been floating you would have seen them.
My uncle foils the herons with a mixture of movable decoy herons (they’re territorial fishers) and netting over part of the pond at times, too. And his pond is twice as big as that guys but he doesn’t even have 100 koi–I can’t imagine that guy stuffed 200 into that little thing!
I’m agreeing with everyone else … there is no way there were 150 koi in that pond … never mind 200! I think they must have a cunning plan and decided to get out of there whilst he was away … I’m humming the tune to the ‘Great Escape’ as I type …
I have a 50 foot long koi pond about 2 feet deep. When completed, I put 16 large koi fish into it, and they produced at least 30 babies that survived. Now a small crane comes almost every day to attack the small (3 to 4 inch) koi. I have a scare crow (motion activated Rainbird sprinkler) at each end of the pond. This keeps the heron away, but the small crane can get the fish without activating the scare crow. Do you have any other method of protecting the Koi?
Lloyd Swenson
I can’t believe people would steal koi out of a pond, is it just me or will people take just about anything from anyone nowadays?
Good story and bookmarked….
Nigel