steve22, you are doing what we did. If a person puts a dam across a drainage, essentially the whole thing happens all at once. However, if a person digs out the lake, it can happen in stages. Our lake took 4 years to dig. As people wanted dirt and were willing to pay to get it out, our lake got bigger.
One of advantage of this type of construction is that we can create lots of bottom structure. One thing that I really like is our 7 islands. There isn't any fishing between these islands. The other structure we use a lot is ridges and channels. They are made with a back hoe as people dig out the dirt. Our ridges are be 10-20' wide and anywhere from 3' below water to 3' above water. The channels are 20-50' wide and 10-20' deep.
