Hawk Lake

The LakeGrade rubric puts Hawk Lake at a C: clarity at 7.0 ft, phosphorus readings still being added, and a TSI of 49 signal an intermediate trophic state. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Wisconsin lakes fall. The lake bottoms out at 27 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake is compact at 15 acres, with partial shoreline records and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Hawk Lake sits at rank 86 of 134 in Oneida County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Hawk Lake has no invasive species recorded in Wisconsin state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The state fisheries records do not list documented species for Hawk Lake, which usually reflects a lack of formal fisheries survey work rather than an empty lake. 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.