Amelia Lake

On the LakeGrade scale Amelia Lake grades a B, with clarity at 9.2 ft and 18 µg/L of phosphorus placing it above the Minnesota median. The lake's weakest score is on Secchi depth — the water looks more turbid than its phosphorus number alone would predict.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. The lake's 69 ft maximum depth is in the upper tier for Minnesota — deep enough for cold-water fish to find refuge in summer. Amelia Lake covers 934 acres alongside 7.4 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Pope County's 25 graded waters, Amelia Lake sits at rank 4, near the top of the local distribution.

Amelia Lake is on the Minnesota infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 14 documented species — a notable draw for Minnesota anglers. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. Monitoring depth is thin here: the LakeGrade rubric is applied to a small number of sample years, and the grade will be revised as more data accumulates.