Cedar Lake

Cedar Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. The lake bottoms out at 18 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 249 acres and 3.7 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 Aitkin County's 53 graded lakes, Cedar Lake ranks 27 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

Cedar Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The fishery includes walleye among the lake's 9 documented species — a notable draw for Minnesota anglers. No formal public access is documented at Cedar Lake — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. 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.