Bass Lake

On the LakeGrade rubric, Bass Lake pulls an A: clarity at 16.8 ft and 11 µg/L of phosphorus put it in the top bracket for Wisconsin. With clarity and phosphorus scored, the sub-grades cluster within a letter of each other, pointing to stable conditions rather than one specific stressor.

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. The lake bottoms out at 40 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. Bass Lake covers 145 acres alongside partial shoreline records — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Oconto County's 62 graded waters, Bass Lake sits at rank 2, near the top of the local distribution.

Bass Lake carries an invasive watermilfoil record — boat-launch decontamination and shoreline care matter more here than at uninfested lakes. Walleye are documented at Bass Lake, one of 3 fish species on record for the lake. 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.