Kentuck Lake

Kentuck Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Wisconsin lake of its size and depth. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Kentuck Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. The lake bottoms out at 40 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. Kentuck Lake covers 1,001 acres alongside partial shoreline records, large enough that conditions can vary meaningfully between bays. Kentuck Lake sits at rank 130 of 191 in Vilas County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Eurasian watermilfoil has been documented at Kentuck Lake, requiring shoreline management to keep dense mats from crowding native vegetation. Walleye are documented at Kentuck Lake, one of 5 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Kentuck Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. 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.