Little Elkhart Lake

Little Elkhart Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Sheboygan County. 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.

Trophically, Little Elkhart Lake reads as oligotrophic — nutrient-poor, clear, and ecologically more sensitive to disturbance than richer lakes. The lake bottoms out at 25 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. At 52 acres, Little Elkhart Lake sits below the Wisconsin median: a small water where shoreline activity has an outsized effect on water quality. Within Sheboygan County's 6 graded waters, Little Elkhart Lake sits at rank 1, near the top of the local distribution.

Little Elkhart Lake carries an invasive watermilfoil record — boat-launch decontamination and shoreline care matter more here than at uninfested lakes. The fishery is bass-led, with 3 documented species across the lake's records. 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.