Cannon Lake

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

A TSI above 70 puts Cannon Lake in hypereutrophic territory: visible blooms are common, and clarity rarely climbs even in early summer. A maximum depth of 15 ft puts Cannon Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. With 1,593 acres of surface and 12.0 miles of shoreline, Cannon Lake is a large water by Minnesota standards — recreational pressure is spread across a long shoreline. Cannon Lake ranks 5 of 17 in Rice County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

An invasive species record — flowering rush — has been logged at Cannon Lake; Minnesota PCA maintains the official infested-waters list. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 17 documented species — a notable draw for Minnesota anglers. A documented public access point at Cannon Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been logged at Cannon Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Mar 31 — 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.