West Fox Lake

West Fox Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Crow Wing 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. West Fox Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 55 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. West Fox Lake covers 449 acres alongside 5.2 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. West Fox Lake ranks 8 of 120 in Crow Wing County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

West Fox Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2024, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at West Fox Lake, one of 15 fish species on record for the lake. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. 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.