Minnewashta Lake

Minnewashta Lake carries a solid B grade — strong on most parameters, with measurements that hold up well across the summer season.

A TSI near 42 places Minnewashta Lake in the mesotrophic band — moderate productivity, with seasonal swings between clearer spring water and richer late-summer conditions. At 70 ft of maximum depth, Minnewashta Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. The lake's 680 acres and 8.9 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Within Carver County's 40 graded waters, Minnewashta Lake sits at rank 4, near the top of the local distribution.

Zebra mussel presence at Minnewashta Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Walleye are documented at Minnewashta Lake, one of 14 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Minnewashta Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been logged at Minnewashta Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Apr 5 — 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.