Bufo Lake

Bufo Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Bayfield County. 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.

Trophically, Bufo Lake reads as oligotrophic — nutrient-poor, clear, and ecologically more sensitive to disturbance than richer lakes. The lake bottoms out at 35 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 20 acres, with partial shoreline records and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Bufo Lake sits at rank 33 of 55 in Bayfield County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

No invasive species are currently listed at Bufo Lake — the lake remains off the Wisconsin infested-waters roster. The fishery is bass-led, with 2 documented species across the lake's records. 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.