Bardon Lake

Bardon Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Douglas County. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

The lake's low TSI puts it in oligotrophic territory — the cleanest of the four trophic classes, but also the most vulnerable to nutrient-driven shifts. At 102 ft of maximum depth, Bardon Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. Bardon Lake covers 848 acres alongside partial shoreline records — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Douglas County's 40 graded waters, Bardon Lake sits at rank 10, near the top of the local distribution.

Bardon Lake carries an invasive watermilfoil record — boat-launch decontamination and shoreline care matter more here than at uninfested lakes. Walleye are documented at Bardon Lake, one of 5 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Wisconsin DNR 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.