Rice Lake

On the scoring rubric Rice Lake grades a D: clarity at 5.3 ft and 197 µg/L of phosphorus keep it in the lower bracket for Dane County. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Eutrophic conditions are the baseline here: clarity drops noticeably in late summer, and dissolved oxygen near the bottom can become a concern. A maximum depth of just 8 ft means sediment-bound phosphorus releases back into the water column whenever wind stirs the bottom — a classic shallow-lake dynamic. Rice Lake covers 117 acres alongside partial shoreline records — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Dane County's 23 graded lakes, Rice Lake ranks 12 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

Rice Lake has at least one documented invasive species (Curly-Leaf Pondweed), so boaters and anglers should observe clean-drain-dry steps when leaving the lake. 1 fish species are documented at Rice Lake, a mixed warm-water community typical for Wisconsin lakes of this size. 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.