Cole Lake

Cole Lake carries a solid B grade — strong on most parameters, with measurements that hold up well across the summer season. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. Cole Lake reaches 24 ft at its deepest point — typical for Minnesota mid-sized lakes, with seasonal stratification but limited cold-water refuge. Cole Lake covers 142 acres alongside 2.4 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Carlton County's 33 graded waters, Cole Lake sits at rank 8, near the top of the local distribution.

Cole Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2020, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at Cole Lake, one of 11 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Cole Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been logged at Cole Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Apr 18 — 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.