Eagle Lake

Where Eagle Lake is

Eagle Lake lies in the District of Kenora, with shoreline in the Township of Machin.

How deep is Eagle Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Eagle Lake is 24.4 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 466 depth contours for Eagle Lake.

See also Ontario's Largest and Deepest Lakes

Surveyed Depths

Ontario has surveyed the depths of several thousand of its lakes over more than half a century. Later surveys were conducted by boat with satellite positioning and produced hundreds of thousands of soundings per lake. Earlier surveys were charted by running transects across the water and drawing depth contours by hand.

Water quality

Ontario’s Lake Partner Program is a volunteer monitoring network. Participants collect water samples for phosphorus analysis and measure water clarity through the summer with a Secchi disk. Most sites are sampled for phosphorus once a year, in spring, and some several times a year between spring and fall. Phosphorus in many lakes rises through the summer, so the two kinds of average are measured on different bases.

Phosphorus is the nutrient that controls how much algae a lake can grow. A lake with little phosphorus stays clear and supports cold-water fish such as lake trout. As phosphorus rises, algae increase, the water clouds, and oxygen in the deep water falls as the algae decay. The province classifies each monitoring site by its average phosphorus:

• Oligotrophic, below 10 micrograms per litre: clear water and low algae.
• Mesotrophic, from 10 to 20: moderately productive water, with more algae and weed growth than an oligotrophic lake but rarely a bloom.
• Eutrophic, above 20: nutrient-rich water, prone to algal blooms and low oxygen at depth.

Eagle Lake has 4 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Four have reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned. All are classified mesotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 1299/4 at Waldhof Bay, deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 6 years to 2024. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 11.1 micrograms per litre, within the mesotrophic band, which runs from 10 to 20.

A Secchi disk is a white or black-and-white plate lowered on a marked line until it disappears from view. The depth at which it vanishes is the Secchi depth, a direct measure of water clarity. Clearer water gives a deeper reading.

The 4 clarity readings at site 1299/4 give a median Secchi depth of 2.55 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 1299/4

See also Lake Water Quality and Blue-Green Algae in Ontario

Eagle Lake Weather

The weather page for Eagle Lake carries the forecast over the water, wave heights across the lake, and the modelled water temperature.

Eagle Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Eagle Lake as a cold-water lake.

A lake separates into layers through the summer where it is deep enough. Sunlight and wind warm and mix the upper few meters, and beneath a band of rapid cooling, the thermocline, the water stays cold. A shallow lake mixes to the bottom instead and warms through, sooner in spring and later into autumn.

No provincial monitoring station records water temperature on Eagle Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Rawson Lake climate station, 39 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 28,156 hectares and its mean depth. The province’s records give no mean depth for Eagle Lake; the model uses 6.4 meters, estimated from the lake’s depth contours.

Each day’s figure carries the model’s typical error for that month on lakes of the same size. The figure in the chart below is the temperature near the surface, away from the shoreline. Bays, shallows and water deeper below the surface differ in temperature. Temperature is not measured when ice covers the lake. The weather page for Eagle Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Eagle Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 22 fish species in Eagle Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, among them brook trout. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Muskellungepike
• Walleyeperch
• Saugerperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Burbotcod

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 42 fish spawning records within the Eagle Lake outline, for six different species, and all of them are mapped below.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout26 areas41.7 ha
• Walleye5 areas79.4 ha
• White Sucker4 areas0.5 ha
• Muskellunge4 areas18.7 ha
• Smallmouth Bass2 areas1.2 ha
• Northern Pike1 area0.1 ha

The federal Fisheries Act prohibits the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat without an authorization, so a dock, dredging, infill or shoreline work at a mapped spawning area is reviewed on that basis.

Stocking history

Ontario’s stocking records for Eagle Lake run from 1946 to 1966 and hold 22 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 8,550,000 released in nine of the years between 1946 and 1957. The last recorded release was 3,000 brook trout fingerlings in 1966.

The province’s record of stocking for recreational fishing, kept from 2016, lists no release into Eagle Lake.

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for eleven species taken from Eagle Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location south of Eagle River, Aubrey & Temple Twps., Kenora Dist. Each figure below is the most meals a month the guide advises for a fish of that length. Where mercury sets the advice, the figure falls as the fish gets longer, because mercury accumulates over a fish’s life. A zero means the guide advises no meals of that fish at that size.

General population: adultsSensitive population: children under fifteen, women who are or may become pregnant

Fisheries Management Zone 5

Eagle Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 5. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Eagle Lake

Zone-wide, Smelt may not be used as bait or possessed for use as bait.

Where a row reads zone-wide, the zone’s own season or limit above applies.

See also Fishing Seasons in Ontario, Zone by Zone and Fish Stocking in Ontario Lakes

Islands and names

Eagle Lake contains 692 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, 37 of them over 10 hectares and 288 under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 73 official names on the water and its islands: 30 islands, 29 bays, two rocks, three narrows and two points on islands. A further 8 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 29

• Bottle Bay
• Boulder Bay
• Camp 6 Bay
• Eldorado Bay
• Favell Bay
• Fornieri Bay
• Froghead Bay
• Jackfish Bay
• Kennedy's Bay
• Kuenzli Bay
• Little Muskeg Bay
• Littleneck Bay
• McKenzie Bay
• Meridian Bay
• Mukluk Bay
• Muskeg Bay
• Myer's Bay
• Nash's Bay
• Osbourne Bay
• Outlet Bay
• Portage Bay
• Reserve Bay
• Rice Bay
• Smith's Bay
• Spring Bay
• Stanton Bay
• Temple Bay
• Vermilion Bay
• Waldhof Bay

Shoals and rocks 2

• Walleye Rock One
• Walleye Rock Two

Harbours, cuts and narrows 3

• Brûlé Narrows
• Canoe Narrows
• Hole-in-the-Wall

Points on the shore 8

• Bear Point
• Birch Point
• Detour Point
• Hilder's Point
• Partridge Point
• Red Pine Point
• Rendezvous Point
• Windigo Point

Nearby lakes

• Wabigoon Lake35 km away
• Thunder Lake40 km away
• Dinorwic Lake47 km away
• Dryberry Lake48 km away

All lakes

Questions about Eagle Lake

• How deep is Eagle Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 24.4 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Eagle Lake?

  Its surface covers 281.9 square kilometers and it holds 692 islands. Of its 1,011 kilometers of shoreline, 628 kilometers is the mainland shore and 383 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Eagle Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 22 species, among them lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, northern pike, muskellunge and lake whitefish. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name brook trout.

• Is the water clear?

  All four monitoring sites with a phosphorus status are classified mesotrophic, the middle of the province’s three bands.