Stevens Lake

Stevens 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.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Stevens Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. Stevens Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 63 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. At 100 acres, Stevens Lake fits the Minnesota median for monitored lakes, with 2.3 miles of shoreline. Within the 133 graded lakes of Cass County, Stevens Lake sits at rank 108, near the bottom of the county list.

Stevens Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Bass fishing is part of the appeal: the species list runs to 10, anchored by largemouth and/or smallmouth bass. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. 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.