Bufo Lake

Bufo Lake earns an A — every scored parameter (clarity and phosphorus) rates among the best monitored waters in Bayfield County. With clarity and phosphorus scored, the sub-grades cluster within a letter of each other, pointing to stable conditions rather than one specific stressor.

A TSI near 43 places Bufo Lake in the mesotrophic band — moderate productivity, with seasonal swings between clearer spring water and richer late-summer conditions. 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 27 of 52 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.