Girl Lake

On the LakeGrade rubric, Girl Lake pulls an A: clarity at 17.0 ft and 12 µg/L of phosphorus put it in the top bracket for Minnesota. Sub-grades cluster within a single letter of each other, which usually means the lake is in stable trophic balance rather than fighting one specific stressor.

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. Girl Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 81 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. At 428 acres, Girl Lake fits the Minnesota median for monitored lakes, with 9.4 miles of shoreline. Within Cass County's 133 graded waters, Girl Lake sits at rank 6, near the top of the local distribution.

Girl Lake is on the Minnesota infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. Muskie are on the species list at Girl Lake, alongside the lake's 18 other documented fish. A documented public access point at Girl 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.