Minnesota Lake Depths

Game fish · trout and salmon family (char)

Lake trout

Salvelinus namaycush

Native to MinnesotaRecorded in 31 Minnesota lakes
Illustration of a lake trout in side view
AI-generated illustration, not a photograph and not to scale.
Minnesota lakes
116 lake trout lakes, second only to Alaska
Water
Never warmer than about 65°F
Lifespan
Grows slowly but lives long, with a reported maximum age of 50
Spawns
Fall, usually at night over large rocks and cobble
Minnesota record
Lake Trout (before 1980, weight not certified): 43 lb 8 oz — Lake Superior near Hovland, Cook County, 1955

Where lake trout have been recorded

31 of the 1,788 Minnesota lakes on this site with fish records list lake trout, across 6 counties. Tap a dot to open that lake’s depth map.

Trout Lake, St. Louis CountyBurntside Lake, St. Louis CountyPokegama Lake (Main Bay), Itasca CountySnowbank Lake, Lake CountyGreenwood Lake, Cook CountyTrout Lake, Itasca CountyThomas Lake, Lake CountyBig Trout Lake, Crow Wing CountyGabimichigami Lake, Cook CountyPokegama Lake (Wendigo), Itasca CountyLoon Lake, Cook CountyMukooda Lake, St. Louis CountyFraser Lake, Lake CountyEast Bearskin Lake, Cook CountyGrindstone Lake, Pine CountyAlder Lake, Cook CountyBearskin Lake, Cook CountyMagnetic Lake, Cook CountyBluewater Lake, Itasca CountyFlour Lake, Cook CountyLittle Trout Lake, St. Louis CountyTrout Lake, Cook CountyCaribou Lake, Itasca CountyBirch Lake, Cook CountySpring Lake, St. Louis CountyIron Chief Complex Lake, St. Louis CountySabin Lake (Embarrass Mine), St. Louis CountySagamore Mine, Crow Wing CountyCruiser Lake, St. Louis CountyPennington Mine, Crow Wing CountyBear Lake, Lake County

Recorded here Other lakes with fish records

How we know

  • 24lakes where a DNR fisheries survey caught them
  • 15lakes the DNR has stocked since 2016; 7 of them are listed on that stocking alone

A lake can appear in more than one line. A lake that isn’t listed may still have them: records exist only where someone caught, netted or stocked them.

Inland lakes on this list run from 18 to 7,957 acres (median 528) and from 60 to 450 ft deep (median 100 ft).

How many turn up in DNR surveys

Minnesota DNR lake surveys use standard gear: gill nets set offshore for 24 hours (the main gear for walleye, northern pike, yellow perch, cisco, whitefish and trout), trap nets set near shore (the main gear for bluegill, crappie and bullheads), and on some lakes electrofishing, most often for bass. The DNR reports each gear separately, as fish per net set. These rates come from the newest standard survey of each lake on this site, 1959–2025 — a measure of how many fish a lake holds, not how many an angler will catch.

Found in
5 of 1579 lakes surveyed this way
Typical rate
0.50 per gill net where found
Highest
1.0 per gill net
Method
fish per gill net set

“Typical” is the median across the lakes where the survey caught at least one. Each gear catches different fish, so the rates are not added together. A single survey is a snapshot of one season.

Highest survey rates on this site

  1. Fraser Lake, Lake County 1986 1.0
  2. Big Trout Lake, Crow Wing 2024 0.58
  3. Alder Lake, Cook 2015 0.50
  4. Grindstone Lake, Pine 2025 0.44
  5. Sagamore Mine, Crow Wing 2023 0.14

Fish per gill net set, with survey year. Survey effort and season differ between lakes.

Often found with

Share of these lakes that also list each fish.

How to recognize it

White or yellowish spots on a dark green to light gray body, a deeply forked tail and a small adipose fin. No orange, pink or red spots, and the inside of the mouth is white.

Don’t confuse it with

Brook trout — A square tail, red spots with blue halos and wavy light lines on the back.

Life in a Minnesota lake

Few states still have lake trout that reproduce on their own, and Minnesota is one. They need deep, cold, clear lakes with rocky bottoms, found mostly in the northeast and the far north-central part of the state, where they often share the top-predator role with northern pike. A lake has to hold cold water all summer and offer open-water prey like cisco.

Lake trout cruise open water after prey and chase it down; adults mostly eat fish, cisco above all, though some populations eat plankton all their lives and stay small. Eggs fall between rocks and hatch after about four months.

Source: the sources below.

Rules and eating

Check the rules before you keep fish. Each lake page shows the regulations that apply there, and the Minnesota DNR fishing regulations page is the official source. Before eating fish from a particular lake, check the Minnesota Department of Health’s fish consumption guidance.

All 31 lakes with lake trout

Show every lake, by county

Cook County 10

Alder Lake, Bearskin Lake, Birch Lake, East Bearskin Lake, Flour Lake, Gabimichigami Lake, Greenwood Lake, Loon Lake, Magnetic Lake, Trout Lake

Crow Wing County 3

Big Trout Lake, Pennington Mine, Sagamore Mine

Itasca County 5

Bluewater Lake, Caribou Lake, Pokegama Lake (Main Bay), Pokegama Lake (Wendigo), Trout Lake

Lake County 4

Bear Lake, Fraser Lake, Snowbank Lake, Thomas Lake

Pine County 1

Grindstone Lake

St. Louis County 8

Burntside Lake, Cruiser Lake, Iron Chief Complex Lake, Little Trout Lake, Mukooda Lake, Sabin Lake (Embarrass Mine), Spring Lake, Trout Lake

Sources

← All fish of Minnesota