St James Pit Lake

St James Pit Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota.

A TSI value of 21 puts St James Pit Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. The lake's 381 ft maximum depth is in the upper tier for Minnesota — deep enough for cold-water fish to find refuge in summer. The lake's 124 acres and 2.5 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. St James Pit Lake ranks 15 of 187 in St. Louis County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

St James Pit 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. Walleye are documented at St James Pit Lake, one of 5 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at St James Pit Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. 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.