Lida Lake

Lida Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Minnesota 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.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. Lida Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 58 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. Lida Lake covers 5,523 acres alongside 19.1 miles of shoreline, large enough that conditions can vary meaningfully between bays. Lida Lake ranks 48 of 97 in Otter Tail County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Lida Lake is on the Minnesota infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. Muskie are on the species list at Lida Lake, alongside the lake's 20 other documented fish. A documented public access point at Lida 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.