Smith Lake

Smith Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Vilas County. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Trophically, Smith Lake reads as oligotrophic — nutrient-poor, clear, and ecologically more sensitive to disturbance than richer lakes. The lake bottoms out at 18 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. Smith Lake is small — 41 acres alongside partial shoreline records — which makes it sensitive to even modest changes in watershed runoff or recreational pressure. Smith Lake sits at rank 141 of 202 in Vilas County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Smith Lake has no invasive species recorded in Wisconsin state databases as of 2024, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The fishery is bass-led, with 2 documented species across the lake's records. 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.