Jay Gould Lake

On the LakeGrade scale Jay Gould Lake grades a B, with clarity at 13.0 ft and 21 µg/L of phosphorus placing it above the Minnesota median. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Jay Gould Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. A maximum depth of 33 ft puts Jay Gould Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. Jay Gould Lake covers 552 acres alongside 7.4 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Among the 141 graded lakes in Itasca County, Jay Gould Lake sits at rank 68, above the county median.

Jay Gould 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 Jay Gould Lake, one of 16 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Jay Gould Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. The lake has a partial ice record — 6 observed ice-outs, centered near Apr 22. 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.