Velvet Lake

Velvet Lake sits at the top of the Wisconsin DNR grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Wisconsin. 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 Wisconsin lakes fall. The lake bottoms out at 16 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake is compact at 34 acres, with partial shoreline records and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Velvet Lake ranks 24 of 134 in Oneida County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

Velvet Lake has no invasive species recorded in Wisconsin state databases as of 2025, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Bass fishing is part of the appeal: the species list runs to 3, anchored by largemouth and/or smallmouth bass. 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.