Beast Lake

On the LakeGrade scale Beast Lake grades a B, with clarity at 10.2 ft and phosphorus readings still being added placing it above the Minnesota median. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Beast Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. At 66 ft of maximum depth, Beast Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. The lake is compact at 85 acres, with 3.3 miles of shoreline and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Among the 187 graded lakes in St. Louis County, Beast Lake sits at rank 50, above the county median.

Beast Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The fishery is bass-led, with 2 documented species across the lake's records. 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.