Dorothy Lake

Dorothy 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's low TSI puts it in oligotrophic territory — the cleanest of the four trophic classes, but also the most vulnerable to nutrient-driven shifts. 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. At 96 acres, Dorothy Lake sits below the Wisconsin median: a small water where shoreline activity has an outsized effect on water quality. Within Oneida County's 134 graded waters, Dorothy Lake sits at rank 14, near the top of the local distribution.

Dorothy Lake has at least one documented invasive species (Chinese Mystery Snail), so boaters and anglers should observe clean-drain-dry steps when leaving the lake. The fishery is bass-led, with 5 documented species across the lake's records. A documented public access point at Dorothy Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. 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.