St. Joe Lake

St. Joe Lake carries a solid B grade — strong on most parameters, with measurements that hold up well across the summer season. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. The lake's 52 ft maximum depth is in the upper tier for Minnesota — deep enough for cold-water fish to find refuge in summer. At 20 acres, St. Joe Lake sits below the Minnesota median: a small water where shoreline activity has an outsized effect on water quality. Among the 40 graded lakes in Carver County, St. Joe Lake ranks 8 — in the top quartile locally.

No invasive species are currently listed at St. Joe Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. The fishery is bass-led, with 10 documented species across the lake's records. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. Ice-out has been logged at St. Joe Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Apr 3 — a useful baseline for tracking climate trends. 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.