Kenogamisis Lake

Where Kenogamisis Lake is

Kenogamisis Lake lies in the District of Thunder Bay, within 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.

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 a water sample each spring for phosphorus analysis and measure water clarity through the summer with a Secchi disk.

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 spring phosphorus. Below 10 micrograms per litre is oligotrophic: clear water and low algae. From 10 to 20 is mesotrophic: moderately productive water, with more algae and weed growth than an oligotrophic lake but rarely a bloom. Above 20 is eutrophic: nutrient-rich water, prone to algal blooms and low oxygen at depth.

A Secchi disk is a 20 centimeter 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.

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

Fish in Kenogamisis Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 19 fish species in Kenogamisis Lake. The province classes the lake as cool water. The record took effect on 27 January 2011, and it compiles what field biologists had reported by then. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, among them lake sturgeon. They appear in the records below.

Seven of the 21 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 current stocking programme, recorded from 2016, lists no release into Kenogamisis Lake.

Eating the fish

The 2025 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. The advice 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 7

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

The figures are the number of fish an angler may catch and keep in a day and have in possession, under a sport fishing licence and under a conservation licence. The rows are the whole zone’s, and they apply to every lake in it.

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

Kenogamisis Lake Ice Fishing

When the ice comes and goes

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.

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.

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 inside wetlands mapped in the province’s Wetland With Significance dataset. 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

• Dog Lake217 km away
• Hawkeye Lake219 km away
• Missinaibi Lake276 km away
• Lac des Mille Lacs281 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.