Beartrack Lake

Beartrack Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Minnesota lake of its size and depth. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Beartrack Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. At 55 ft of maximum depth, Beartrack Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. Beartrack Lake covers 156 acres alongside 2.8 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Among the 187 graded lakes in St. Louis County, Beartrack Lake sits at rank 73, above the county median.

No invasive species are currently listed at Beartrack Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. The state fisheries records do not list documented species for Beartrack Lake, which usually reflects a lack of formal fisheries survey work rather than an empty lake. No formal public access is documented at Beartrack Lake — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. 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.