what happened is that my pond is gonna be about a foot below what i orignally thought. so i will end up with 1/4 of my 0.25 acre pond being only 1-3 feet instead of 2-4 feet. i decided to use a mini excavator to dig out the area down to 5-10 feet with the extra dirt i will create a small island with shoreplants and a bench the island will drop off to the creek channal which is about ten feet deep. i still will have an area of 1-3 feet for bluegill spawning but i thought 5-10' of water would hold fish better then 1-3 feet. my question is has anyone used a mini excevator? how did it work? i cant use a backhoe in due to steep slopes and only a narrow 6ft wide path into the area. the mini is 4.5ft wide with a 8 or 9 foot dig depth. the area would be exclusivly for fish no swimming so what structure would be good?
Thanks i was hopeing to due this over my spring break in april before i let the pond fill

I think you will be disappointed with a dinky digger. They handle very little soil at a time and most are underpowered. Hand shovel is about as fast, but not near as fun. If it is too steep for a backhoe, it is too steep for a mini excavator.

Agreed.

Another overlooked problem is what to do with the dirt. If the OP has a dump truck or dump trailer to load it on, that's fine. If not, the dirt will stack up fast, and it will become more and more troublesome to transport it away from the pond.

Digging is the easy part, moving dirt is the hard part.

the path to the area that i will be digging is to narrow for a backhoe the only place wide enough for the backhoe is to steep. iv got a two trailers i will be using to move dirt. also i will use some of the dirt to build an island. i will have 40 hours over three days to do the work. i worked the 30 hours with a backhoe and my dad and i excavated out the main pond built the dam and put in a new septic line. i got the specs today they are at http://kubota.com/f/products/u25specs.pdf
iv got someone who will move the dirt with my john deere mower w/ trailer up a short path to an area i can get my john deere tractor with its bucket in to move the dirt. i calculated that i will dig out a 40X40 area to an average depth of 7 feet which is 11,200 cubic feet of dirt of that about 1000-2000 cubic feet will go into raiseing an area of land to a small island for my mom to plant some shore plants and for a sitting bench if anyone wants to raft over there. about 500 cubic feet will be used to finish the fishing peer. the remaining 9500 cubic feet of dirt will be moved out via lawnmower and trailer. the bucket on the mini is 3 cubic feet meant for hard clay digging.at an average rate of two scoops a minute. this would result, if every bucket was full, in 14,500 cubic feet of dirt removed this allows for error being that with the backhoe we removed over twenty scoops a minute for about five hours. the land is free of any large roots so i dont think they will be a problem. One thing i thought about putting in was a cave in the bottom. iv got one of those old igloo dog houses what if i put a little concrete in the bottom of it to hold it down? i was told to put some old pool liner 20X20 piece and weight it down then cover it with gravel to create a gravel bed in about four feet of water anyone heard of that before?
Thanks sorry it was so long but thats what i came up with today at school.

Your math seems good, but you will find when you start using the dinky digger, you will not move dirt nearly that fast. They struggle with hard clay. You will have to scrape at it with the raker teeth alot. I'm pretty good on the mini's and it still took me a day and a half to dig a water line 225 feet long X 4 feet deep thru hard clay. It will get the job done, but I would allow an extra couple of days.

thanks h20 the dirt is topsoil consistincy down to 5 feet then a light clay the good stuff we ran into for the dam was about 7-15 feet down and blueish gray. i dug a few holes with a shovel last fall one was 10'X10' and five feet deep it took me an two hours to dig by hand.