Prairie Lake

Prairie 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 Prairie Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. A maximum depth of just 10 ft means sediment-bound phosphorus releases back into the water column whenever wind stirs the bottom — a classic shallow-lake dynamic. The lake is compact at 59 acres, with partial shoreline records and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Prairie Lake sits at rank 87 of 134 in Oneida County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

No invasive species are currently listed at Prairie Lake — the lake remains off the Wisconsin infested-waters roster. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 4 documented species — a notable draw for Wisconsin anglers. 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.