Jorgens Lake

Jorgens Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Jorgens Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. The lake bottoms out at 21 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. Jorgens Lake is small — 73 acres alongside 2.8 miles of shoreline — which makes it sensitive to even modest changes in watershed runoff or recreational pressure. Jorgens Lake ranks 89 of 187 in St. Louis County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Jorgens Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The fishery is bass-led, with 3 documented species across the lake's records. No formal public access is documented at Jorgens Lake — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. 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.