Comfort Lake

Comfort Lake carries a solid B grade — strong on most parameters, with measurements that hold up well across the summer season. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

At a TSI of 51, Comfort Lake reads as eutrophic — nutrient-rich enough that summer algal growth and reduced clarity are expected, not unusual. The lake bottoms out at 47 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 218 acres and 3.2 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Comfort Lake ranks 12 of 31 in Chisago County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Zebra mussel presence at Comfort Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Muskie are on the species list at Comfort Lake, alongside the lake's 15 other documented fish. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. Ice-out has been recorded 11 times at Comfort Lake, with a median around Apr 14. 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.