Mora Lake

Mora Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Mora Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. A maximum depth of 40 ft puts Mora Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. The lake's 210 acres and 9.9 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 Cook County's 128 graded lakes, Mora Lake ranks 81 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

No invasive species are currently listed at Mora Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. The state fisheries records do not list documented species for Mora Lake, which usually reflects a lack of formal fisheries survey work rather than an empty lake. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. 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.