Sylvia Lake

Sylvia Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Minnesota lake of its size and depth.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Sylvia Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. Sylvia Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 56 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. The lake is compact at 85 acres, with 2.0 miles of shoreline and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Sylvia Lake ranks 15 of 55 in Stearns County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Zebra mussel presence at Sylvia Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Walleye are documented at Sylvia Lake, one of 19 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. Ice-out has been recorded 9 times at Sylvia Lake, with a median around Apr 16. 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.