Grand Lake

Grand Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Minnesota lake of its size and depth. With clarity and phosphorus scored, the sub-grades cluster within a letter of each other, pointing to stable conditions rather than one specific stressor.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Grand Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. A maximum depth of 34 ft puts Grand Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. The lake's 651 acres and 3.8 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Grand Lake ranks 25 of 55 in Stearns County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Zebra mussels have been documented at Grand Lake, which alters the filter-feeding balance and can paradoxically increase water clarity while disrupting the food web. Walleye are documented at Grand Lake, one of 14 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Grand Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been recorded 12 times at Grand Lake, with a median around Apr 19. 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.