Mcguire Lake

On the scoring rubric Mcguire Lake grades a D: clarity at 6.0 ft and phosphorus readings still being added keep it in the lower bracket for Itasca County. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

A TSI in the eutrophic range signals a lake doing what nutrient-loaded waters do — supporting an active algal community at the cost of clear water. The lake's maximum depth is not yet documented in state morphometric records — context for its physical structure remains limited. The lake's surface area is not consistently recorded across state datasets — physical context remains partial. Mcguire Lake ranks 131 of 141 in Itasca County — at the lower end of the locally monitored distribution.

No invasive species are currently listed at Mcguire Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. The state fisheries records do not list documented species for Mcguire Lake, which usually reflects a lack of formal fisheries survey work rather than an empty lake. No formal public access is documented at Mcguire Lake — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. Ice-out has been logged at Mcguire Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Apr 16 — 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.