Little Long Lake

Little Long Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota.

The lake's low TSI puts it in oligotrophic territory — the cleanest of the four trophic classes, but also the most vulnerable to nutrient-driven shifts. Little Long Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 61 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. Little Long Lake covers 305 acres alongside 7.4 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Itasca County's 141 graded waters, Little Long Lake sits at rank 22, near the top of the local distribution.

Little Long Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at Little Long Lake, one of 11 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Little Long 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.