Red Sand Lake

Red Sand Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Minnesota lake of its size and depth. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Red Sand Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. A maximum depth of 23 ft puts Red Sand Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. Red Sand Lake covers 521 acres alongside 4.6 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Red Sand Lake ranks 94 of 120 in Crow Wing County — at the lower end of the locally monitored distribution.

Red Sand Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2024, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at Red Sand Lake, one of 10 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. Ice-out has been recorded 19 times at Red Sand Lake, with a median around Apr 13. 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.