West Vermilion Lake

West Vermilion Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at West Vermilion Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. At 76 ft of maximum depth, West Vermilion Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. At 39,272 acres, West Vermilion Lake is one of the larger lakes in St. Louis County, with 341.5 miles of shoreline supporting multiple distinct use patterns. West Vermilion Lake sits at rank 97 of 187 in St. Louis County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

An invasive species record — spiny waterflea — has been logged at West Vermilion Lake; Minnesota PCA maintains the official infested-waters list. West Vermilion Lake's fishery is anchored by muskellunge, with 17 documented species in total — a destination water for muskie anglers. A documented public access point at West Vermilion Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. Ice-out has been logged at West Vermilion Lake more than two dozen times, putting the median around Apr 30 — a useful baseline for tracking climate trends. 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.