Maud Lake

On the LakeGrade rubric, Maud Lake pulls an A: clarity at 15.3 ft and 10 µg/L of phosphorus put it in the top bracket for Minnesota. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

Trophically, Maud Lake reads as oligotrophic — nutrient-poor, clear, and ecologically more sensitive to disturbance than richer lakes. The lake bottoms out at 32 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 517 acres and 4.2 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Among the 93 graded lakes in Becker County, Maud Lake ranks 11 — in the top quartile locally.

Zebra mussel presence at Maud Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Walleye are documented at Maud Lake, one of 15 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Maud 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.