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.

A TSI near 47 places West Vermilion Lake in the mesotrophic band — moderate productivity, with seasonal swings between clearer spring water and richer late-summer conditions. 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. West Vermilion Lake covers 39,272 acres alongside 341.5 miles of shoreline, large enough that conditions can vary meaningfully between bays. West Vermilion Lake sits at rank 96 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. Muskie are on the species list at West Vermilion Lake, among the lake's 17 documented fish. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. 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.