Lake Wazee

Lake Wazee in Jackson County, Wisconsin, is one of the Midwest's deepest and clearest freshwater lakes—a former iron ore open-pit mine that was allowed to flood and has since developed into a freshwater diving destination of exceptional quality whose reputation has spread well beyond Wisconsin's borders to attract divers from across the upper Midwest and beyond. At maximum depths approaching 350 feet, Wazee is the deepest inland lake in Wisconsin—a depth that creates a technical diving dimension alongside the recreational diving experience available in its shallower zones, and that gives the lake a presence more comparable to a mountain tarn than a Midwest glacial lake. The mine pit origin of Lake Wazee gives it the geological character that created Cuyuna Range's famous pit lakes in Minnesota—iron-rich metamorphic rock as the basin material, limited nutrient input from the rocky watershed, and the exceptional clarity that results from these geological conditions. Visibility at Lake Wazee regularly reaches sixty feet or more—clarity that has attracted underwater photographers from considerable distances seeking freshwater conditions rarely available in the Midwest's glacial lake landscape. The blue-green color of the water in bright sunlight, visible from the surface, signals the clarity that waits below. The lake's rocky walls, exposed by the original mining excavation, plunge from the surface at angles that create vertical or near-vertical sections—a geological wall experience in freshwater that recalls the famous dive walls of oceanic settings transposed to the Wisconsin countryside. These walls are colonized by the freshwater organisms that tolerate the Lake Wazee's cold, clear, relatively low-nutrient water: freshwater sponges in discrete colonies, mussels in clusters on stable rock surfaces, and the invertebrate community that forms the biological foundation for the fish populations that inhabit the lake. Walleye, smallmouth bass, and northern pike have established populations in Lake Wazee, and the extraordinary clarity of the water creates fish encounters of a quality simply unavailable at more typical Wisconsin lakes. A large walleye hovering at twenty feet in sixty-foot visibility—fully visible, observable from meaningful distance, its characteristic glassy eyes and spotted markings identifiable in full detail—is a freshwater wildlife encounter that deserves comparison with the best fish encounters available anywhere in Midwest freshwater diving. The lake's cold, clear conditions also attract rainbow trout, which have found in Wazee a freshwater environment whose clarity and temperature suit their preferences. For Wisconsin divers and upper Midwest visitors seeking the best single freshwater dive experience the region provides, Lake Wazee is consistently cited alongside Minnesota's Cuyuna Range lakes as a destination that justifies significant travel. Its combination of extraordinary clarity, impressive depth range, vertical rock wall terrain, and quality fish encounters makes it a site that exceeds expectations set by any description—a freshwater dive that requires experience to believe.