Hinds Lake

Hinds Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

A TSI value of 39 puts Hinds Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. The lake bottoms out at 36 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 305 acres and 3.5 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Hinds Lake sits at rank 46 of 77 in Hubbard County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

No invasive species are currently listed at Hinds Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. The fishery is bass-led, with 16 documented species across the lake's records. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. 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.