Larder Lake

Where Larder Lake is

Larder Lake lies in the District of Timiskaming, with shoreline in the Township of Larder Lake and the Township of Mcgarry.

How deep is Larder Lake?

Larder Lake reaches a maximum recorded depth of 38.8 meters, determined from 262,339 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.

Larder Lake has 5 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 oligotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 6457/1 at N30,Main Basin, deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 8 years to 2024. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 8.76 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 3 clarity readings at site 6457/1 give a median Secchi depth of 2.1 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 6457/1

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

Larder Lake Weather

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

Larder Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Larder Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 12.1 meters against its maximum of 38.8.

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 Larder 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, 31 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 3,719 hectares and its mean depth of 12.1 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 Larder Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Larder Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 20 fish species in Larder Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, brook trout and lake sturgeon. 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
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Brown Bullheadcatfish
• Lake Sturgeonother

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 9 fish spawning records within the Larder Lake outline, for three different species. One is records of under 100 square meters each, and the other eight are mapped areas.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Whitefish6 areas9.1 ha
• Northern Pike2 areas8.2 ha
• Lake Trout1 records0 m²

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 Larder Lake run from 1946 to 2015 and hold 56 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 2,976,789 released in eleven of the years between 1947 and 2015. The last recorded release was 145,000 walleye frys in 2015.

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for six species taken from Larder Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in McGarry Twp., 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. 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 8

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

Fisheries management zones around Larder 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

Islands and names

Larder Lake contains 45 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, four of them over 10 hectares and 26 under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 12 official names on the water and its islands: 4 islands, four bays and two narrows. A further 4 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 4

• Dublin Bay
• Fitzpatrick Bay
• Northwest Bay
• Spoon Bay

Harbours, cuts and narrows 2

• Big Narrows
• Little Narrows

Points on the shore 4

• Enright Point
• Gold King Point
• Lucky Boy Point
• Tighe Point

Nearby lakes

• Kenogami Lake44 km away
• Long Lake44 km away
• Sesekinika Lake45 km away
• Watabeag Lake69 km away

All lakes

Questions about Larder Lake

• How deep is Larder Lake?

  Its maximum recorded depth is 38.8 meters.

• How big is Larder Lake?

  Its surface covers 37.2 square kilometers and it holds 45 islands. Of its 108 kilometers of shoreline, 81 kilometers is the mainland shore and 27 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Larder Lake?

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

• Is the water clear?

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