La Motte Lake

On the LakeGrade rubric, La Motte Lake pulls an A: clarity at 16.8 ft and 14 µg/L of phosphorus put it in the top bracket for Wisconsin. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

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. At 71 ft of maximum depth, La Motte Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. At 182 acres, La Motte Lake fits the Wisconsin median for monitored lakes, with partial shoreline records. Within Menominee County's 5 graded waters, La Motte Lake sits at rank 1, near the top of the local distribution.

La Motte Lake is on the Wisconsin infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. Bass fishing is part of the appeal: the species list runs to 2, anchored by largemouth and/or smallmouth bass. 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.