Mud Hen Lake

Mud Hen Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Burnett County. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

A TSI value of 34 puts Mud Hen Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. Mud Hen Lake is unusually deep for Wisconsin at 66 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. Mud Hen Lake covers 569 acres alongside partial shoreline records — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Mud Hen Lake ranks 14 of 70 in Burnett County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

An invasive species record — Chinese Mystery Snail — has been logged at Mud Hen Lake; Wisconsin DNR maintains the official infested-waters list. The fishery is bass-led, with 3 documented species across the lake's records. 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.