Stark Lake

Stark Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Stark Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. Stark Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 66 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. The lake's 217 acres and 3.6 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Stark Lake ranks 103 of 120 in Crow Wing County — at the lower end of the locally monitored distribution.

Stark Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2024, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 10 documented species — a notable draw for Minnesota anglers. A documented public access point at Stark Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been recorded 17 times at Stark Lake, with a median around Apr 10. 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.