Sugar Lake

Sugar Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. A maximum depth of 44 ft puts Sugar Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. The lake's 699 acres and 6.7 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Within Cass County's 133 graded lakes, Sugar Lake ranks 74 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

No invasive species are currently listed at Sugar Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. Walleye are documented at Sugar Lake, one of 11 fish species on record for the lake. 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.