Moon Bay Lake

Moon Bay Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Wisconsin lake of its size and depth. Sub-grades cluster within a single letter of each other, which usually means the lake is in stable trophic balance rather than fighting one specific stressor.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Wisconsin lakes fall. Moon Bay Lake is unusually deep for Wisconsin at 64 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. With 6,148 acres of surface and partial shoreline records, Moon Bay Lake is a large water by Wisconsin standards — recreational pressure is spread across a long shoreline. Within Chippewa County's 16 graded lakes, Moon Bay Lake ranks 10 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

Moon Bay Lake carries an invasive watermilfoil record — boat-launch decontamination and shoreline care matter more here than at uninfested lakes. Walleye are documented at Moon Bay Lake, one of 8 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Wisconsin DNR public-access list. 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.