Sand Point Lake

On the scoring rubric Sand Point Lake grades a D: clarity at 5.9 ft and phosphorus readings still being added keep it in the lower bracket for St. Louis 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. The lake's 184 ft maximum depth is in the upper tier for Minnesota — deep enough for cold-water fish to find refuge in summer. With 8,527 acres of surface and 148.0 miles of shoreline, Sand Point Lake is a large water by Minnesota standards — recreational pressure is spread across a long shoreline. Sand Point Lake ranks 165 of 215 in St. Louis County — at the lower end of the locally monitored distribution.

Sand Point Lake is on the Minnesota infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. Walleye are documented at Sand Point Lake, one of 21 fish species on record for the lake. No formal public access is documented at Sand Point Lake — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. Ice-out has been recorded 5 times at Sand Point Lake, with a median around Apr 19. 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.