Bone Lake

Bone Lake pulls a D on the LakeGrade rubric — phosphorus loading and limited clarity hold it below the Minnesota average.

A TSI in the eutrophic range signals a lake doing what nutrient-loaded waters do — supporting an active algal community at the cost of clear water. A maximum depth of 30 ft puts Bone Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. Bone Lake covers 221 acres alongside 3.0 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Bone Lake ranks 29 of 31 in Washington County — at the lower end of the locally monitored distribution.

Zebra mussel presence at Bone Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Walleye are documented at Bone Lake, one of 14 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Bone Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been logged at Bone Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Apr 13 — a useful baseline for tracking climate trends. 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.