Mitchell Lake

Mitchell Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Minnesota lake of its size and depth. Clarity is the limiting factor — phosphorus is reasonable but suspended particles or algal cells keep water transparency below Minnesota norms.

A TSI near 47 places Mitchell Lake in the mesotrophic band — moderate productivity, with seasonal swings between clearer spring water and richer late-summer conditions. Mitchell Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 78 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. Mitchell Lake covers 429 acres alongside 5.0 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Mitchell Lake sits at rank 77 of 120 in Crow Wing County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Mitchell Lake is on the Minnesota infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. Walleye are documented at Mitchell Lake, one of 18 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. The lake has a partial ice record — 9 observed ice-outs, centered near Apr 17. 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.