White Sand Lake

White Sand Lake earns an A — water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate among the best monitored waters in Crow Wing County. Sub-grades cluster within a single letter of each other, which usually means the lake is in stable trophic balance rather than fighting one specific stressor.

A TSI near 43 places White Sand Lake in the mesotrophic band — moderate productivity, with seasonal swings between clearer spring water and richer late-summer conditions. The lake bottoms out at 27 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. At 415 acres, White Sand Lake fits the Minnesota median for monitored lakes, with 3.4 miles of shoreline. Within Crow Wing County's 120 graded lakes, White Sand Lake ranks 71 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

White Sand Lake is on the Minnesota infested-waters list for zebra mussels — boaters should follow clean-drain-dry protocols when moving gear to or from the lake. Walleye are documented at White Sand Lake, one of 14 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. The lake has a long ice-out record — 52 observations on file, with a median ice-out around Apr 13. 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.