Wood Lake

Wood Lake grades an F: water clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate poorly, placing it among the most stressed lakes monitored in Minnesota. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

Hypereutrophic conditions mean the lake is operating at the upper end of the productivity scale, with all the bloom risk that implies. 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. At 485 acres, Wood Lake fits the Minnesota median for monitored lakes, with 5.1 miles of shoreline. Within the 5 graded lakes of Yellow Medicine County, Wood Lake sits at rank 4, near the bottom of the county list.

Wood Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2021, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at Wood Lake, one of 11 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.