Katherine Lake

Katherine Lake sits at the top of the Wisconsin DNR grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Wisconsin. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

A TSI value of 22 puts Katherine Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. The lake bottoms out at 30 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. Katherine Lake covers 524 acres alongside partial shoreline records — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Oneida County's 140 graded lakes, Katherine Lake ranks 82 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

An invasive species record — Banded Mystery Snail — has been logged at Katherine Lake; Wisconsin DNR maintains the official infested-waters list. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 5 documented species — a notable draw for Wisconsin anglers. Public access is available — the lake is on the Wisconsin DNR 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.