Smith Lake

Smith Lake carries a solid B grade — strong on most parameters, with measurements that hold up well across the summer season.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Smith Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. Smith Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 54 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. Smith Lake covers 491 acres alongside 6.8 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Smith Lake sits at rank 80 of 120 in Crow Wing County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Smith Lake is on the Minnesota infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. Bass fishing is part of the appeal: the species list runs to 13, anchored by largemouth and/or smallmouth bass. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. 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.