Siskiwit Lake

Siskiwit Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Wisconsin lake of its size and depth. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Siskiwit Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. A maximum depth of just 13 ft means sediment-bound phosphorus releases back into the water column whenever wind stirs the bottom — a classic shallow-lake dynamic. The lake's 285 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. Siskiwit Lake ranks 49 of 55 in Bayfield County — at the lower end of the locally monitored distribution.

Siskiwit Lake has no invasive species recorded in Wisconsin state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at Siskiwit Lake, one of 5 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.