Crooked Lake

On the LakeGrade scale Crooked Lake grades a B, with clarity at 14.0 ft and 20 µg/L of phosphorus placing it above the Minnesota median. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Crooked Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. The lake bottoms out at 35 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. Crooked Lake covers 284 acres alongside 6.2 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Crooked Lake ranks 25 of 51 in Douglas County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Zebra mussel presence at Crooked Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 12 documented species — a notable draw for Minnesota anglers. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA 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.