Hawk Lake

Hawk Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Oneida County. 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 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. Among the 140 graded lakes in Oneida County, Hawk Lake sits at rank 66, above the county median.

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.