To be perfectly honest, there are 4 guys involved with this property. It's 300 acres and the primary reason we own it is for Deer, Turkey, Quail & Fishing......in that order. We all have kids and we are trying to make our ground into the best of everything so our kids can enjoy growing up with something we never had as kids. Now, don't get me wrong......right now, it's for the Dads. If you notice in the backround we have turned all our fields over to warm and cool season grasses and we are actively working with quail unlimited and pheasants forever. Covey headquarters are located throughout the farm and we are in talks with conservation to help us with our Timber Stand Improvement project. The kids are young and we are breaking them in slowly. However, fishing is the one thing that kids of any age can enjoy. Having said that, we built this lake like we do any project.............we go all out and do it right. Our philosophy is that if you're going to take the time and spend the money, make it as prime as you possibly can. Ray Scott's video played a crucial role in how we went about designing this lake. We are stocking BG, RES, Channel Cat, LMB and Crappie. Because of the different needs of our fish we thought it would be a good idea to provide a good amount of cover for our forage fish as well as good spawning areas with plenty of drop offs for fish to escape to. The southern end of our lake is the deepest part(not pictured) and it has some long points with nice deep holes for our cats(make up about 2 acres). The north end of the lake ( 2.5 to 3 acres ) is made up the flat (4 ft deep) which has trenches that drop to 8 ft and they slowly get deeper until they end in the 3 big humps right across from the dam. These humps are at about 12 ft and they drop off into about 18 ft of water. We concreted in large hedge apple trees that should reach about 3 ft in depth. These will be great deep water structure in the summer as well as winter seasons (pic #2). We think we have created outstanding habitat that should provide excellent fishing for years to come and hopefully we will be able to land a trophy from time to time as well. Most of us will fish when we are up there working or hunting but our one concern is that we might not be able to keep up with removing the correct amount of fish per year. We have not run the numbers yet (it's only 50% filled and all we have stocked is minnows, BG & RES) but we have a book that we are going to keep to track what goes in and out. I will say one thing, we all love to walk around and catch LMB but trophy size crappie is something that we all are looking forward to. The occasional catfish when we are drinking a beer and panfish for the little ones so they have plenty of fun. Even though this is purely recreational, we all want to max out the potential. Any advice from the experts would be greatly appreciated and I hope you like what you see with our place. We are very proud of it..........but still open for suggestions or any advice.