Pike Lake

Pike Lake carries a solid B grade — strong on most parameters, with measurements that hold up well across the summer season. The lake's weakest score is on Secchi depth — the water looks more turbid than its phosphorus number alone would predict.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Wisconsin lakes fall. A maximum depth of 45 ft puts Pike Lake in the middle of Wisconsin's depth distribution. The lake's 461 acres and partial shoreline records put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Pike Lake ranks 7 of 15 in Washington County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Zebra mussel presence at Pike Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Walleye are documented at Pike Lake, one of 5 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.