White Ash Lake

On the scoring rubric White Ash Lake grades a D: clarity at 2.8 ft and 68 µg/L of phosphorus keep it in the lower bracket for Polk County. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

Eutrophic conditions are the baseline here: clarity drops noticeably in late summer, and dissolved oxygen near the bottom can become a concern. A maximum depth of just 9 ft means sediment-bound phosphorus releases back into the water column whenever wind stirs the bottom — a classic shallow-lake dynamic. White Ash Lake covers 147 acres alongside partial shoreline records — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within the 74 graded lakes of Polk County, White Ash Lake sits at rank 70, near the bottom of the county list.

An invasive species record — Chinese Mystery Snail — has been logged at White Ash Lake; Wisconsin DNR maintains the official infested-waters list. Bass fishing is part of the appeal: the species list runs to 3, anchored by largemouth and/or smallmouth bass. Public access is available — the lake is on the Wisconsin DNR public-access list. 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.