The carbon cycle of global inland waters is quantitatively comparable to other components in the global carbon budget. Among inland waters, a significant part is man-made lakes formed by damming rivers. Man-made lakes are undergoing a rapid increase in number and size. Human impacts and frequent algae blooms lead to it necessary to make a better constraint on their carbon cycles. Here, we make a primary estimation on the air–water CO₂ transfer flux through an algae bloom year for a subtropical man-made lake—Hongfeng Lake, Southwest China. To do this a new type of glass bottles was designed for content and isotopic analysis of DIC and other environmental parameters. At the early stage of algae bloom, CO₂ was transferred from the atmosphere to the lake with a net flux of 1.770 g·C·m⁻². Later, the partial pressure (pCO₂) of the aqueous CO₂ increased rapidly and the lake outgassed to the atmosphere with a net flux of 95.727 g·C·m⁻². In the remaining days, the lake again took up CO₂ from the atmosphere with a net flux of 14.804 g·C·m⁻². As a whole, Lake Hongfeng released 4527 t C to the atmosphere, accounting for one-third of the atmosphere/soil CO₂ sequestered by chemical weathering in the whole drainage. With an empirical mode decomposition method, we found air temperature plays a major role in controlling water temperature, aqueous pCO₂ and hence CO₂ flux. This work indicates a necessity to make detailed and comprehensive carbon budgets in man-made lakes.