Silvertarpon: I was very much in your situation when we started our lake. We had the local electric company drill a number of holes and they filled with water. Still, it is a leap of faith. I had constant nightmares of ending with a huge hole and no water. Fortunately, the lake has filled.

Our lake is also built on flat land. As such, we discovered that we didn't have to do it all at one time. We started in 2000 and will finish this year. You don't have to do everything all at once but can do it as time and money allows. This also allows you do make a "test" lake and see how it looks.

At first we couldn't find anyone that wanted the dirt so we had to pay for the work ourselves. We then started finding people that wanted the dirt. We gave them the dirt but they had to pay to move it. That means we got the second half of the lake for free.

One other thing we did was just pile up the dirt (clay) into 6 high islands in the middle of the lake.

Norm Kopecky