Wolf Lake

Wolf Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

A TSI in the eutrophic range signals a lake doing what nutrient-loaded waters do — supporting an active algal community at the cost of clear water. A maximum depth of 42 ft puts Wolf Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. At 307 acres, Wolf Lake fits the Minnesota median for monitored lakes, with 5.2 miles of shoreline. Within the 51 graded lakes of Douglas County, Wolf Lake sits at rank 42, near the bottom of the county list.

Wolf 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 Wolf Lake, one of 12 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA 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.