Little Moose Lake

Little Moose Lake sits at a C on the grading scale — not impaired, not pristine, with summer measurements that vary year to year.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. The lake bottoms out at 23 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 289 acres and 4.5 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Within the 141 graded lakes of Itasca County, Little Moose Lake sits at rank 113, near the bottom of the county list.

Little Moose Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Muskie are on the species list at Little Moose Lake, among the lake's 13 documented fish. A documented public access point at Little Moose 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.