How do you dam up a creek?

First of all call up a local wildlife resource office to make sure you can do this some states won't let you. The first choice and cheapest would be to move soil and gravel into a part of the creek to dam it up, then mat it down. Over a month or so soil will start building up on the back side of the dam. This will strengthen your dam. Also you'll need to add spillways on the side so your property won't flood. I did this to build up a drinking hole for my horses and its working great. If you want to spend some money then dam up the creek (like I said above) higher up the stream then down stream take rebar and space it 6in. Apart and then weld horizontally across 6in. Then go 1 foot further and do the same now you should have two evenly spaced crossed rebar. Then take two pieces of sheet metal and put on outside of each rebar. Fill with concrete, remove sheet metal, and destroy soil dam.