Little Crooked Lake

Little Crooked Lake carries a solid B grade — strong on most parameters, with measurements that hold up well across the summer season. The lake's weakest score is on Secchi depth — the water looks more turbid than its phosphorus number alone would predict.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Little Crooked Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. The lake bottoms out at 30 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 154 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. Among the 191 graded lakes in Vilas County, Little Crooked Lake sits at rank 95, above the county median.

An invasive species record — Rusty Crayfish — has been logged at Little Crooked Lake; Wisconsin DNR maintains the official infested-waters list. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 5 documented species — a notable draw for Wisconsin anglers. 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.