Silver Lake

Silver Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Waushara County. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

The lake's low TSI puts it in oligotrophic territory — the cleanest of the four trophic classes, but also the most vulnerable to nutrient-driven shifts. Silver Lake is unusually deep for Wisconsin at 56 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. Silver Lake is small — 50 acres alongside partial shoreline records — which makes it sensitive to even modest changes in watershed runoff or recreational pressure. Within Waushara County's 30 graded waters, Silver Lake sits at rank 4, near the top of the local distribution.

Silver Lake has at least one documented invasive species (Banded Mystery Snail), so boaters and anglers should observe clean-drain-dry steps when leaving the lake. Walleye are documented at Silver Lake, one of 4 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Wisconsin DNR public-access list. 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.