Lake Owen

Lake Owen sits at the top of the Wisconsin DNR grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Wisconsin. Sub-grades cluster within a single letter of each other, which usually means the lake is in stable trophic balance rather than fighting 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. Lake Owen is unusually deep for Wisconsin at 95 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. With 1,250 acres of surface and partial shoreline records, Lake Owen is a large water by Wisconsin standards — recreational pressure is spread across a long shoreline. Lake Owen ranks 20 of 55 in Bayfield County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

An invasive species record — Chinese Mystery Snail — has been logged at Lake Owen; Wisconsin DNR maintains the official infested-waters list. Walleye are documented at Lake Owen, one of 5 fish species on record for the lake. 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.