Okauchee Lake

Okauchee Lake sits at the top of the Wisconsin DNR grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Wisconsin. 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. At 90 ft of maximum depth, Okauchee Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. Okauchee Lake covers 1,210 acres alongside partial shoreline records, large enough that conditions can vary meaningfully between bays. Okauchee Lake sits at rank 33 of 48 in Waukesha County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Zebra mussel presence at Okauchee Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 6 documented species — a notable draw for Wisconsin anglers. 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.