Shetek Lake

On the LakeGrade rubric Shetek Lake fails the cutoffs — a TSI of 73 and persistent algal pressure put it in the bottom tier. Sub-grades cluster within a single letter of each other, which usually means the lake is in stable trophic balance rather than fighting one specific stressor.

Hypereutrophic conditions mean the lake is operating at the upper end of the productivity scale, with all the bloom risk that implies. At only 10 ft deep, Shetek Lake is shallow — wind keeps the water column mixed and sediment resuspension drives phosphorus levels harder to manage. At 3,462 acres, Shetek Lake is one of the larger lakes in Murray County, with 36.0 miles of shoreline supporting multiple distinct use patterns. Shetek Lake ranks 10 of 10 in Murray County — at the lower end of the locally monitored distribution.

Zebra mussel presence at Shetek Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Walleye are documented at Shetek Lake, one of 17 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 logged at Shetek Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Apr 3 — a useful baseline for tracking climate trends. 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.