Quill Lake

Quill Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. A maximum depth of 46 ft puts Quill Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. Quill Lake is small — 85 acres alongside 2.8 miles of shoreline — which makes it sensitive to even modest changes in watershed runoff or recreational pressure. Within St. Louis County's 187 graded lakes, Quill Lake ranks 130 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

Quill Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2022, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Bass fishing is part of the appeal: the species list runs to 4, anchored by largemouth and/or smallmouth bass. 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.