OK, here's an update for anyone interested...
I found a young dirt contractor right down the road who seemed to have a good sense about pond building. Jay Walton did the dirt work for me and I've attached some photos of the finished dirt work. As expected, the pond is not exactly as shown in the concept drawings but the key features are there.
Starting at the upper end of the pond, there was an existing spawning area. I plan to throw some pallets into the upper end for FHM. We connected this spawning area with a trench to the deeper basin. I'll fill the trench with gravel and add brush at the end to form the first "fish highway" as suggested by Eric.
We didn't do anything to the old pond basin but we raised full pool by about 2 ft. So, this will form the deepest part of the pond at 18-20 ft. We added some peninsulas that weren't in the concept drawing. Between the peninsulas is a small ridge line that provides a little more structure between the old and new sections of the pond.
We created dirt mounds down the center line of the new pond area as shown in the photos. I plan to sculpt those with my track loader, add gravel on top and create shelves as described previously if it doesn't rain before I can get to it. We placed two large tree trunks between the mounds (not shown). Finally, we built a "shelf" along the dam where I'll place rip rap and brush in a crib type layout also suggested by Eric. The shelf along the dam leads to a second 2-3 ft spawning area near a very gentle sloping spillway forming a second fish "highway".
Thanks for all of the suggestions and input.
More to follow, I'm sure...
