Kimball Lake

Kimball Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota. With clarity and phosphorus scored, the sub-grades cluster within a letter of each other, pointing to stable conditions rather than one specific stressor.

The lake's low TSI puts it in oligotrophic territory — the cleanest of the four trophic classes, but also the most vulnerable to nutrient-driven shifts. The lake's 77 ft maximum depth is in the upper tier for Minnesota — deep enough for cold-water fish to find refuge in summer. The lake's 190 acres and 3.1 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Kimball Lake ranks 18 of 120 in Crow Wing County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

Zebra mussels have been documented at Kimball Lake, which alters the filter-feeding balance and can paradoxically increase water clarity while disrupting the food web. The fishery includes walleye among the lake's 16 documented species — a notable draw for Minnesota anglers. A documented public access point at Kimball 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.