Cedar Island Lake

Cedar Island Lake pulls a D on the LakeGrade rubric — phosphorus loading and limited clarity hold it below the Minnesota average. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

At a TSI of 60, Cedar Island Lake reads as eutrophic — nutrient-rich enough that summer algal growth and reduced clarity are expected, not unusual. The lake's 75 ft maximum depth is in the upper tier for Minnesota — deep enough for cold-water fish to find refuge in summer. The lake's 986 acres and 27.1 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Within the 55 graded lakes of Stearns County, Cedar Island Lake sits at rank 42, near the bottom of the county list.

Cedar Island Lake is on the Minnesota infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. Muskie are on the species list at Cedar Island Lake, alongside the lake's 22 other documented fish. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. 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.