Burntside Lake

Burntside Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

A TSI value of 35 puts Burntside Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. The lake's 126 ft maximum depth is in the upper tier for Minnesota — deep enough for cold-water fish to find refuge in summer. At 7,314 acres, Burntside Lake is one of the larger lakes in St. Louis County, with 103.5 miles of shoreline supporting multiple distinct use patterns. Within St. Louis County's 187 graded waters, Burntside Lake sits at rank 12, near the top of the local distribution.

Burntside Lake has at least one documented invasive species (spiny waterflea), so boaters and anglers should observe clean-drain-dry steps when leaving the lake. Walleye are documented at Burntside Lake, one of 15 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. The lake has a long ice-out record — 88 observations on file, with a median ice-out around Apr 30. 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.