Clear Lake

Clear Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. 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 in the eutrophic range signals a lake doing what nutrient-loaded waters do — supporting an active algal community at the cost of clear water. A maximum depth of 28 ft puts Clear Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. The lake's 429 acres and 4.3 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Clear Lake sits at rank 21 of 31 in Washington County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Clear 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. Walleye are documented at Clear Lake, one of 14 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Clear Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been recorded 11 times at Clear Lake, with a median around Apr 11. 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.