Combined the chlorophyll a concentrations of 30 sampling sites in Jinpo Lake collected in September of 2015 with the Landsat 8 OLI data, the spectral characteristics of chlorophyll a were analyzed. In 11 bands of Landsat 8 OLI data, the first seven bands(B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, B7) were selected to construct the chlorophyll a concentration inversion model individually or in combination using multivariate statistical analysis method. The results showed that B5/B3, (B3+B4)/B5, and B3/(B1+B5) model showed better accuracy with R2 0.754 1, 0.774 3 and 0.739 6 respectively. As a comparison, several typical water body index models were selected, in which the NDWI, MNDWI and EWI models had their R2 larger than 0.7, (0.747 6, 0.726 7 and 0.763 5 respectively). Then we chose the six models for further regression analysis. The results of the 6 models showed that the R2 between predicted values and measured chlorophyll a were in the range 0.071 1-0.809 4. In the NDWI model, R2 was 0.761 4 with average relative error of 13%, the maximum relative error of 22.4%, the minimum relative error of 1.4%, and the root mean square error of 0.20 μg/L. Compared with the band combination model, the water body index model did not need the band random combination and was more suitable as a common method for monitoring water quality in lakes. The spatial distribution of chlorophyll a concentrations showed some space variability. The chlorophyll a concentrations in shallow water areas were higher than those in the central area, whereas the chlorophyll a concentrations in the inlet area were higher than those in other areas.