Little Sissabagama Lake

Little Sissabagama Lake sits at the top of the Wisconsin DNR grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Wisconsin. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

A TSI value of 34 puts Little Sissabagama Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. Little Sissabagama Lake is unusually deep for Wisconsin at 75 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. Little Sissabagama Lake covers 308 acres alongside partial shoreline records — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Among the 52 graded lakes in Sawyer County, Little Sissabagama Lake ranks 7 — in the top quartile locally.

No invasive species are currently listed at Little Sissabagama Lake — the lake remains off the Wisconsin infested-waters roster. Walleye are documented at Little Sissabagama Lake, one of 5 fish species on record for the lake. 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.