Kenogami Lake

Where Kenogami Lake is

Kenogami Lake lies in the District of Timiskaming.

How deep is Kenogami Lake?

Kenogami Lake reaches a maximum recorded depth of 8.1 meters, determined from 55,285 soundings.

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.

Kenogami Lake has 7 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Five 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 2295/1 at N end, deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 7 years to 2024. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 15.13 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 3 clarity readings at site 2295/1 give a median Secchi depth of 1.5 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 2295/1

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

Kenogami Lake Weather

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

Kenogami Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Kenogami Lake as a cool-water lake, with a mean depth of 3.8 meters against its maximum of 8.1.

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 Kenogami Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Kirkland Lake climate station, 13 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 855 hectares and its mean depth of 3.8 meters.

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 Kenogami Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Kenogami Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 8 fish species in Kenogami Lake.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Brook Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Burbotcod

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 1 fish spawning record within the Kenogami Lake outline: 1 walleye spawning area covering 0.75 hectares. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Walleye1 area0.8 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 Kenogami Lake run from 1947 to 1954 and hold 5 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 675,000 released in four of the years between 1947 and 1954. The last recorded release was 75,000 walleye eggs in 1954.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for two species taken from Kenogami Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Grenfell & Eby Twps., Timiskaming 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 8

Kenogami Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 8. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Kenogami Lake

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

Islands and names

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

Nearby lakes

• Sesekinika Lake8 km away
• Watabeag Lake27 km away
• Long Lake29 km away
• Mistinikon Lake40 km away

All lakes

Questions about Kenogami Lake

• How deep is Kenogami Lake?

  Its maximum recorded depth is 8.1 meters.

• How big is Kenogami Lake?

  Its surface covers 8.6 square kilometers and it holds 14 islands. Of its 33 kilometers of shoreline, 30 kilometers is the mainland shore and 3 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Kenogami Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name eight species, among them walleye, smallmouth bass, northern pike, lake whitefish and brook trout.

• Is the water clear?

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