Gijikiki Lake

Gijikiki Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

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's 70 ft maximum depth is in the upper tier for Minnesota — deep enough for cold-water fish to find refuge in summer. Gijikiki Lake covers 113 acres alongside 3.2 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Lake County's 142 graded waters, Gijikiki Lake sits at rank 21, near the top of the local distribution.

No invasive species are currently listed at Gijikiki Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. The state fisheries records do not list documented species for Gijikiki Lake, which usually reflects a lack of formal fisheries survey work rather than an empty lake. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. 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.