Kenogamisis Lake

Where Kenogamisis Lake is

Kenogamisis Lake lies in the District of Thunder Bay, with shoreline in the Municipality of Greenstone.

How deep is Kenogamisis Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Kenogamisis Lake is 30.0 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 92 depth contours for Kenogamisis 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.

No monitoring site on Kenogamisis Lake is registered with the Lake Partner Program, so no phosphorus or clarity record exists for the lake.

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.

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

Kenogamisis Lake Weather

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

Kenogamisis Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Kenogamisis Lake as a cool-water lake, with a mean depth of 1.9 meters against its maximum of 30.

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 Kenogamisis Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Geraldton Airport climate station, 10 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 4,221 hectares and its mean depth of 1.9 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 Kenogamisis Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Kenogamisis Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 19 fish species in Kenogamisis Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, among them lake sturgeon. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Burbotcod
• Lake Sturgeonother

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 2 fish spawning records within the Kenogamisis Lake outline: 2 walleye spawning areas covering 11.78 hectares.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Walleye2 areas11.8 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 Kenogamisis Lake run from 1951 to 1953 and hold 2 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 420,000 released in two of the years between 1951 and 1953. The last recorded release was 300,000 walleye eggs in 1953.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for seven species taken from Kenogamisis Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Outflow Basin, Ashmore Twp., Thunder Bay 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. Where the guide has no result yet for certain contaminants at a location, it sets a precautionary limit of 16 meals a month. 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 7

Kenogamisis Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 7. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Kenogamisis Lake

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

Kenogamisis Lake Ice Fishing

Ice In / Out Date

Ice has been recorded on Kenogamisis Lake in 22 winters between 1967 and 1992. The median date of complete ice cover is November 11 and the median date of complete ice loss is May 9, a median season of 176 days.

The longest recorded season is 202 days in 1973-74, and the shortest is 154 days in 1978-79.

Averaged twenty winters at a time, the date of complete ice cover has barely moved: November 13 in the winters from 1960, and November 11 in those from 1980. Across the same two blocks the average season has gone from 177 days to 175.

Ice in to ice out by winter on Kenogamisis Lake

The record was contributed by W. R. Skinner, Environment Canada to the Global Lake and River Ice Phenology Database, and the ice was read at a weather station rather than from the middle of the lake. Observations were last contributed for 1992, and none have been added since.

Ice conditions

No public record reports the thickness or the condition of the ice on Kenogamisis Lake 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

Kenogamisis Lake contains 45 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, three of them over 10 hectares and thirteen under a tenth of a hectare. Three of them lie mostly inside wetland the province’s Wetland With Significance dataset maps as unclassified wetland. Bell Island, at 163 hectares, is larger than the next ten together, which cover 62.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 13 official names on the water and its islands: 1 island, four bays and two narrows. A further 2 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 4

• Barton Bay
• Devilfish Bay
• Hardrock Bay
• Magnet Bay

Harbours, cuts and narrows 2

• Main Narrows
• West Narrows

Points on the shore 2

• Buckety Point
• Discovery Point

Nearby lakes

• Wildgoose Lake24 km away
• Lake Nipigon121 km away
• White Lake139 km away
• Dog Lake217 km away

All lakes

Questions about Kenogamisis Lake

• How deep is Kenogamisis Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 30 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Kenogamisis Lake?

  Its surface covers 42.2 square kilometers and it holds 45 islands. Of its 194 kilometers of shoreline, 167 kilometers is the mainland shore and 27 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Kenogamisis Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name nineteen species, among them walleye, northern pike, lake whitefish and yellow perch. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name lake sturgeon.