Silver Lake

On the LakeGrade scale Silver Lake grades a B, with clarity at 7.3 ft and 18 µg/L of phosphorus placing it above the Wisconsin median. The lake's weakest score is on Secchi depth — the water looks more turbid than its phosphorus number alone would predict.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Wisconsin lakes fall. The lake bottoms out at 44 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 516 acres and partial shoreline records put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Silver Lake ranks 6 of 13 in Kenosha County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Zebra mussel presence at Silver Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. The fishery includes walleye among the lake's 7 documented species — a notable draw for Wisconsin anglers. 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.