Clear Lake

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

A TSI value of 31 puts Clear Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. At 74 ft of maximum depth, Clear Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. The lake is compact at 94 acres, with partial shoreline records and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Within Rusk County's 13 graded waters, Clear Lake sits at rank 3, near the top of the local distribution.

Clear Lake has at least one documented invasive species (Chinese Mystery Snail), so boaters and anglers should observe clean-drain-dry steps when leaving the lake. Walleye are documented at Clear Lake, one of 6 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Wisconsin DNR 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.