Machickanee Flowage Lake

Machickanee Flowage Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. 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.

A TSI near 49 places Machickanee Flowage Lake in the mesotrophic band — moderate productivity, with seasonal swings between clearer spring water and richer late-summer conditions. A maximum depth of 21 ft puts Machickanee Flowage Lake in the middle of Wisconsin's depth distribution. Machickanee Flowage Lake covers 436 acres alongside partial shoreline records — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within the 66 graded lakes of Oconto County, Machickanee Flowage Lake sits at rank 62, near the bottom of the county list.

Zebra mussel presence at Machickanee Flowage Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. The fishery is bass-led, with 4 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.