Wind Lake

Wind Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Wind Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. The lake bottoms out at 32 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 926 acres and 17.4 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Wind Lake sits at rank 90 of 142 in Lake County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Wind Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at Wind Lake, one of 10 fish species on record for the lake. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. 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.