Moose Lake

Moose Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Minnesota lake of its size and depth.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. Moose Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 61 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. At 1,273 acres, Moose Lake is one of the larger lakes in Itasca County, with 7.3 miles of shoreline supporting multiple distinct use patterns. Moose Lake ranks 63 of 141 in Itasca County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Moose 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. Muskie are on the species list at Moose Lake, among the lake's 17 documented fish. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA 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.