Skunk Lake

Skunk Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

A TSI value of 38 puts Skunk Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. Skunk Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 55 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. Skunk Lake covers 218 acres alongside 5.1 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Among the 77 graded lakes in Hubbard County, Skunk Lake ranks 12 — in the top quartile locally.

No invasive species are currently listed at Skunk Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 9 documented species — a notable draw for Minnesota anglers. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. Ice-out has been recorded 7 times at Skunk Lake, with a median around Apr 24. 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.