Lougee Lake

Lougee Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Crow Wing County. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

A TSI near 41 places Lougee Lake in the mesotrophic band — moderate productivity, with seasonal swings between clearer spring water and richer late-summer conditions. Lougee Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 53 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. The lake's 212 acres and 2.2 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Lougee Lake ranks 28 of 120 in Crow Wing County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

Lougee Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2024, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at Lougee Lake, one of 11 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Lougee Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been logged at Lougee Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Apr 9 — a useful baseline for tracking climate trends. 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.