Upper Red Lake: West-Central

Upper Red Lake: West-Central 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.

At a TSI of 54, Upper Red Lake: West-Central reads as eutrophic — nutrient-rich enough that summer algal growth and reduced clarity are expected, not unusual. The lake bottoms out at 15 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. With 119,294 acres of surface and 59.2 miles of shoreline, Upper Red Lake: West-Central is a large water by Minnesota standards — recreational pressure is spread across a long shoreline. Within the 86 graded lakes of Beltrami County, Upper Red Lake: West-Central sits at rank 79, near the bottom of the county list.

Starry stonewort has been recorded at Upper Red Lake: West-Central — a relatively new invasive in Minnesota that forms dense, hard-to-remove mats. Walleye are documented at Upper Red Lake: West-Central, one of 15 fish species on record for the lake. No formal public access is documented at Upper Red Lake: West-Central — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. Ice-out has been recorded 16 times at Upper Red Lake: West-Central, with a median around Apr 29. 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.