Tiger Cat Flowage Lake

Tiger Cat Flowage Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Sawyer County. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

The lake's low TSI puts it in oligotrophic territory — the cleanest of the four trophic classes, but also the most vulnerable to nutrient-driven shifts. The lake bottoms out at 30 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 819 acres and partial shoreline records put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Among the 52 graded lakes in Sawyer County, Tiger Cat Flowage Lake ranks 9 — in the top quartile locally.

Eurasian watermilfoil has been documented at Tiger Cat Flowage Lake, requiring shoreline management to keep dense mats from crowding native vegetation. Walleye are documented at Tiger Cat Flowage Lake, one of 4 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Wisconsin DNR 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.