Kabekona Bay Lake

Kabekona Bay Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Cass County. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

A TSI value of 38 puts Kabekona Bay Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. Kabekona Bay Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 150 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. At 103,444 acres, Kabekona Bay Lake is one of the larger lakes in Cass County, with 194.9 miles of shoreline supporting multiple distinct use patterns. Among the 133 graded lakes in Cass County, Kabekona Bay Lake sits at rank 41, above the county median.

Zebra mussel presence at Kabekona Bay Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Kabekona Bay Lake's fishery is anchored by muskellunge, with 18 documented species in total — a destination water for muskie anglers. A documented public access point at Kabekona Bay Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. The lake has a long ice-out record — 222 observations on file, with a median ice-out around Apr 28. 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.