Lake Kagawong

Where Lake Kagawong is

Lake Kagawong lies in the District of Manitoulin, with shoreline in the Township of Billings, the Municipality of Central Manitoulin and the Municipality of Gordon / Barrie Island.

How deep is Lake Kagawong?

The deepest mapped contour on Lake Kagawong is 33.5 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 18 depth contours for Lake Kagawong.

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.

Lake Kagawong has 6 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Three have reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned. All are classified oligotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 6888/1 at North East Harbour, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 4 years to 2025. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 8.3 micrograms per litre, within the oligotrophic band, which extends to 10.

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 17 clarity readings at site 6888/1 give a median Secchi depth of 6.7 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 6888/1

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

Lake Kagawong Weather

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

Lake Kagawong weather

Water temperature

No provincial monitoring station records water temperature on Lake Kagawong. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Gore Bay-Manitoulin climate station, 20 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 5,651 hectares and its mean depth. The province’s records give no mean depth for Lake Kagawong; the model uses 11.4 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 Lake Kagawong carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Lake Kagawong

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 14 fish species in Lake Kagawong. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, lake trout and rainbow trout. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Rainbow Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Brown Bullheadcatfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 3 fish spawning records within the Lake Kagawong outline, for two different species, and all of them are mapped below.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Northern Pike2 areas11.1 ha
• Walleye1 area5.6 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 Lake Kagawong run from 1946 to 2015 and hold 63 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 9,888,605 released in seventeen of the years between 1957 and 2015. The last recorded release was 29,384 walleye frys in 2015.

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

Fisheries Management Zone 10

Lake Kagawong lies in Fisheries Management Zone 10. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Lake Kagawong

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

Lake Kagawong Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Lake Kagawong must be removed by March 31. The province sets dates for ice hut removal as a safety measure to ensure huts are removed before thawing occurs. One date applies to an entire fisheries management zone (FMZ). Lake Kagawong lies within FMZ 10.

An ice hut must also be removed before the ice breaks up, whether or not that date has passed. The deadline clears huts from the ice ahead of the thaw and does not close the fishing season.

Registration is required in FMZ 10 for an ice hut built of anything other than fabric, and for a fabric tent covering seven square meters or more. Registration is free, and the number is displayed on the outside of the hut.

Ice conditions

No public record reports the thickness or the condition of the ice on Lake Kagawong on any given day. Ontario publishes ice safety guidance for anyone going out on the ice, at ontario.ca.

See also Lake Ice in Ontario and When the Lakes Will Freeze This Winter

Islands and names

Lake Kagawong contains three islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, one of them over 10 hectares and zero under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 20 official names on the water and its islands: 4 islands, seven bays, one shoal, two harbours and four points on islands. A further 5 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 7

• Ednie's Bay
• Horseshoe Bay
• Long Bay
• Maggy's Bay
• Mud Bay
• Patterson's Bay
• Priors Bay

Shoals and rocks 1

• Sunken Island

Harbours, cuts and narrows 2

• Honeymoon Harbour
• North East Harbour

Points on the shore 5

• Birch Point
• Ednie's Point
• Kerr's Point
• Maple Point
• Tennent's Point

Nearby lakes

• Mindemoya Lake12 km away
• Lake Wolsey17 km away
• Lake Manitou25 km away
• Lauzon Lake57 km away

All lakes

Questions about Lake Kagawong

• How deep is Lake Kagawong?

  Its deepest charted contour is 33.5 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Lake Kagawong?

  Its surface covers 56.5 square kilometers and it holds 3 islands. Of its 69 kilometers of shoreline, 63 kilometers is the mainland shore and 6 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Lake Kagawong?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name fourteen species, among them walleye, smallmouth bass, northern pike, lake whitefish and yellow perch. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name lake trout and rainbow trout.

• Is the water clear?

  All three monitoring sites with a phosphorus status are classified oligotrophic, the clearest of the province’s three bands.