Rice Lake

Rice 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.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Rice Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. At only 10 ft deep, Rice Lake is shallow — wind keeps the water column mixed and sediment resuspension drives phosphorus levels harder to manage. Rice Lake covers 223 acres alongside 5.2 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Cook County's 128 graded lakes, Rice Lake ranks 67 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

Rice Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2022, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at Rice Lake, one of 6 fish species on record for the lake. No formal public access is documented at Rice Lake — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. 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.