Minerva Lake

Minerva 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.

The lake's low TSI puts it in oligotrophic territory — the cleanest of the four trophic classes, but also the most vulnerable to nutrient-driven shifts. The lake bottoms out at 26 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. Minerva Lake covers 222 acres alongside partial shoreline records — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Minerva Lake sits at rank 36 of 70 in Burnett County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

An invasive species record — Chinese Mystery Snail — has been logged at Minerva Lake; Wisconsin DNR maintains the official infested-waters list. Walleye are documented at Minerva Lake, one of 5 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Minerva 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.