Gilkey Lake

Gilkey Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Wisconsin lake of its size and depth. Clarity is the limiting factor — phosphorus is reasonable but suspended particles or algal cells keep water transparency below Wisconsin norms.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Wisconsin lakes fall. A maximum depth of just 6 ft means sediment-bound phosphorus releases back into the water column whenever wind stirs the bottom — a classic shallow-lake dynamic. Gilkey Lake is small — 21 acres alongside partial shoreline records — which makes it sensitive to even modest changes in watershed runoff or recreational pressure. Within the 62 graded lakes of Oconto County, Gilkey Lake sits at rank 49, near the bottom of the county list.

Gilkey Lake is on the Wisconsin infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. Bass fishing is part of the appeal: the species list runs to 2, anchored by largemouth and/or smallmouth bass. 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.