Little Arbor Vitae Lake

Little Arbor Vitae Lake sits at a C on the grading scale — not impaired, not pristine, with summer measurements that vary year to year. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Eutrophic conditions are the baseline here: clarity drops noticeably in late summer, and dissolved oxygen near the bottom can become a concern. Little Arbor Vitae Lake reaches 32 ft at its deepest point — typical for Wisconsin mid-sized lakes, with seasonal stratification but limited cold-water refuge. The lake's 480 acres and partial shoreline records put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Little Arbor Vitae Lake ranks 169 of 191 in Vilas County — at the lower end of the locally monitored distribution.

An invasive species record — Banded Mystery Snail — has been logged at Little Arbor Vitae Lake; Wisconsin DNR maintains the official infested-waters list. Walleye are documented at Little Arbor Vitae Lake, one of 4 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Little Arbor Vitae 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.