Whitefish Lake

Whitefish Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Whitefish Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. Whitefish Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 138 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. With 7,714 acres of surface and 32.2 miles of shoreline, Whitefish Lake is a large water by Minnesota standards — recreational pressure is spread across a long shoreline. Whitefish Lake ranks 3 of 120 in Crow Wing County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

Zebra mussel presence at Whitefish Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. Walleye are documented at Whitefish Lake, one of 23 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. Ice-out has been recorded 22 times at Whitefish Lake, with a median around Apr 25. 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.