Deer Lake

Deer 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.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Wisconsin lakes fall. A maximum depth of 23 ft puts Deer Lake in the middle of Wisconsin's depth distribution. The lake's 153 acres and partial shoreline records put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Within Burnett County's 57 graded waters, Deer Lake sits at rank 9, near the top of the local distribution.

An invasive species record — Chinese Mystery Snail — has been logged at Deer Lake; Wisconsin DNR maintains the official infested-waters list. The fishery is bass-led, with 3 documented species across the lake's records. 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.