West Lake

West Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Florence County. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Trophically, West Lake reads as oligotrophic — nutrient-poor, clear, and ecologically more sensitive to disturbance than richer lakes. The lake bottoms out at 25 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 72 acres, with partial shoreline records and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Among the 39 graded lakes in Florence County, West Lake sits at rank 15, above the county median.

Zebra mussel presence at West Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Walleye are documented at West Lake, one of 5 fish species on record for the lake. 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.