Hand Lake

On the LakeGrade rubric, Hand Lake pulls an A: clarity at 17.0 ft and phosphorus readings still being added put it in the top bracket for Minnesota. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

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 57 ft maximum depth is in the upper tier for Minnesota — deep enough for cold-water fish to find refuge in summer. The lake's 289 acres and 5.8 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Within Cass County's 133 graded waters, Hand Lake sits at rank 11, near the top of the local distribution.

Hand 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. Walleye are documented at Hand Lake, one of 15 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Hand 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.