Mille Lacs Lake is 515.2 square kilometers, or 127,308 acres, and most of that water sits a long way from any bank. Lake of the Woods is more than twice as large again at 1,250.4 square kilometers. Water that size gets planned rather than wandered, because the ride home into a building chop is measured in hours and the fetch has all afternoon to work on you. The same pack holds Lake Minnetonka at 55.4 square kilometers, and thousands of lakes smaller than that, where the useful question is which arm still has water under it at the level the lake is being held at this week.
The pack carries 22,799 charted water bodies. Of those, 10,007 carry a name, and 1,294 of the named ones are larger than a square kilometer, which works out to roughly 247 acres. All three of those counts are the highest of the 48 state lake packs. This is also the one pack of the 48 that ships a depth layer, so the lakes in it have contours drawn on the water itself.
The pack carries 22,799 charted water bodies, the largest count of the 48 state lake packs. Of those, 10,007 carry a name. A name is what you type at the kitchen table the night before, so the named count is the one that decides whether the piece of water you are launching on comes up when you go looking for it.
Of the named water bodies, 1,294 are larger than a square kilometer, roughly 247 acres. That is the set that takes a route instead of a glance, and it is the highest such count of the 48 packs as well. Having many lakes and having many large lakes are two different situations, and this pack leads on both.
| Lake | Charted surface area |
|---|---|
| Lake of the Woods | 1,250 km² (308,980 acres) |
| Rainy Lake | 849 km² (209,718 acres) |
| Lower Red Lake | 661 km² (163,411 acres) |
| Mille Lacs Lake | 515 km² (127,308 acres) |
| Upper Red Lake | 480 km² (118,487 acres) |
| Leech Lake | 415 km² (102,598 acres) |
| Lac des Mille Lacs | 242 km² (59,824 acres) |
| Lake Winnibigoshish | 224 km² (55,352 acres) |
| Vermilion Lake | 156 km² (38,598 acres) |
| Kakagi Lake | 110 km² (27,182 acres) |
| Lake Pepin | 104 km² (25,699 acres) |
| Dryberry Lake | 95 km² (23,426 acres) |
The twelve largest named lakes the Minnesota pack carries, by charted surface area, measured from the chart polygon itself. The pack carries 22,799 charted water bodies in all, 10,007 of them named, and 1,294 named lakes larger than one square kilometer.
Every figure below is measured from the chart polygon in the pack, so it describes the shape Helm draws rather than a number quoted from a guidebook.
Lake of the Woods, at 1,250.4 square kilometers, is larger than Mille Lacs Lake and Leech Lake put together with room to spare. Lower Red Lake and Upper Red Lake come to 1,140.8 square kilometers between them. Vermilion Lake, at 156.2, is close to three times the size of Lake Minnetonka at 55.4, while Lake Winnibigoshish at 224.0 is a little over half of Leech Lake. Those ratios are worth carrying in your head, because crossing time and the amount of open water you are exposed on scale right along with them.
The packs are cut to a box rather than to a state line, so a water body near a border is carried by more than one pack and the whole polygon comes with it. That is why Lac des Mille Lacs at 242.1 square kilometers and Kakagi Lake at 110.0 are in this one. The wording on this page is deliberate. These are the lakes the pack carries, which is a different statement from a list of lakes a state owns.
There is no NOAA chart for a reservoir. The coast has one, drawn and kept up for vessels, and inland water does not get that treatment. Helm builds inland depth from state elevation surveys instead, and takes the water bodies themselves from the National Hydrography Dataset. That pairing is the whole reason a lake here is charted water you can plan a route across against your draft, rather than a blue shape with a name printed on it.
An elevation survey measures a surface that is normally under water. A lake held by a dam sits at whatever level it is being held at on the day you launch, and that level moves through the season. When the water is down, the same contour line has less water over it than it did in June and the bank has moved out toward it. The contour is telling you the shape of the bottom, which does not change. The level is the part you bring with you, from the gauge or from how much of the ramp was showing when you backed down it.
This is also why entering your draft is worth the thirty seconds on inland water. Read against the draft, the shading puts the shoal on the screen while you still have room to turn.
Of the 48 state lake packs, this is the only one that also carries a depth layer, meaning charted depth contours drawn on the lakes themselves and not worked out from the state elevation survey alone. It rides on top of that survey rather than replacing it, so the contour on the screen and the number under the keel are describing the same lake.
On the water it looks like lines on the lake in the places where a lake changes character. The drop off the end of a point. The shoulder of an old creek channel running through the middle of a basin, which is the feature that decides where fish sit and where a prop finds the flat. On Leech Lake at 415.2 square kilometers, or on Lake Winnibigoshish at 224.0, the shoreline in a gray chop stops being much help for finding a spot again. The contour is what gets you back to it.
Inland lake depth comes from state elevation surveys rather than from nautical charts, and a reservoir sits at whatever level it is being held at that week. Treat the shape and the depth as a guide, keep a lookout, and verify locally.
The pack carries 22,799 charted water bodies, of which 10,007 are named, and 1,294 of the named ones are larger than a square kilometer, about 247 acres. Each of those three counts is the highest of the 48 state lake packs.
Depth. This is the only one of the 48 state lake packs that carries its own depth layer, so contours are drawn on the lakes themselves rather than worked out from the state elevation survey alone. The water bodies come from the National Hydrography Dataset, and the elevation surveys sit underneath the whole thing.
Yes. Measured from the chart polygon it is 1,250.4 square kilometers, or 308,980 acres, the largest water body the pack carries. Rainy Lake is in the same pack at 848.7 square kilometers. Packs are cut to a box rather than to a state line, so a lake near a border is carried whole here and also turns up in the neighboring pack.
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