Ely Lake

Ely Lake earns an A — every scored parameter (clarity and phosphorus) rates among the best monitored waters in St. Louis County. With clarity and phosphorus scored, the sub-grades cluster within a letter of each other, pointing to stable conditions rather than one specific stressor.

A TSI value of 35 puts Ely Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. At 70 ft of maximum depth, Ely Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. At 723 acres, Ely Lake fits the Minnesota median for monitored lakes, with 9.6 miles of shoreline. Ely Lake ranks 21 of 187 in St. Louis County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

Zebra mussel presence at Ely Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. The fishery includes walleye among the lake's 14 documented species — a notable draw for Minnesota anglers. A documented public access point at Ely Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been logged at Ely Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Apr 24 — 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.