Little Bass Lake

Little Bass Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Clearwater County. 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. The lake bottoms out at 35 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. Little Bass Lake is small — 51 acres alongside 1.6 miles of shoreline — which makes it sensitive to even modest changes in watershed runoff or recreational pressure. Among the 40 graded lakes in Clearwater County, Little Bass Lake ranks 4 — in the top quartile locally.

Little Bass Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2025, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The state fisheries records do not list documented species for Little Bass Lake, which usually reflects a lack of formal fisheries survey work rather than an empty lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA 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.