I like your plan to set the water level to turn some of your draws into nice coves!
In addition to good fishing, that gives you some bonus options. Some of the people on Pond Boss use their coves as forage ponds or as habituation areas for newly stocked fish. Usually with blocking nets.
I was considering making some artificial coves on our next pond build and narrowing the connection to the main pond with the dirt spoils. You could then much more easily manage a blocking net, or I was even considering building a cinder block structure with a gate to open or close the cove as needed.
For example, anthropic recently performed a shock survey on his bass pond and found out it was sorely lacking for BG in the 3-5" range. If you used a cove as a forage pond, you could put in some brood BG and then feed in the cove until their offspring reached the 3-5" range and release several thousand BG of optimal size into your 13-acre pond.
That might pay out your additional dirt work and improvements in the first year!
