Barnesville Lake

On the LakeGrade rubric, Barnesville Lake pulls an A: clarity readings still being added and 17 µg/L of phosphorus put it in the top bracket for Minnesota. Sub-grades cluster within a single letter of each other, which usually means the lake is in stable trophic balance rather than fighting one specific stressor.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. The lake bottoms out at 17 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake is compact at 11 acres, with 0.7 miles of shoreline and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Among the 2 graded lakes in Clay County, Barnesville Lake sits at rank 1, above the county median.

Barnesville Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2020, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The fishery is panfish-dominated — bluegill, crappie, and sunfish among the 4 species documented for the lake. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. 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.