Puslinch Lake

Where Puslinch Lake is

Puslinch Lake lies in the County of Wellington, within the Township of Puslinch.

How deep is Puslinch Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Puslinch Lake is 3.0 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 4 depth contours for Puslinch 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.

Puslinch Lake has 1 Lake Partner monitoring site, which has yet reported phosphorus for the three years the province requires before a status is assigned.

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

Puslinch Lake Weather

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

Puslinch Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Puslinch Lake as a warm-water lake.

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 Puslinch Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Kitchener/waterloo climate station, 10 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 160 hectares and its mean depth. The province’s records give no mean depth for Puslinch Lake; the model uses 1.5 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 Puslinch Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Puslinch Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 13 fish species in Puslinch Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name three further species, brook trout, muskellunge and rainbow trout. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Largemouth Basssunfish
• Black Crappiesunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Bluegillsunfish
• Brown Bullheadcatfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 2 fish spawning records within the Puslinch Lake outline, for two different species, and all of them are mapped below.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Walleye1 area1.4 ha
• Yellow Perch1 area300 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 Puslinch Lake run from 1946 to 1990 and hold 54 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 1,410,000 released in six of the years between 1947 and 1979. The last recorded release was 750 rainbow trout yearlings in 1990.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for seven species taken from Puslinch Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Puslinch Twp., Wellington Co. 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 16

Puslinch Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 16. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone. The province describes it as a zone of large river systems, with Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching its large lakes, carrying important recreational and tourism fisheries under high fishing effort.

Fisheries management zones around Puslinch Lake

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

Puslinch Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Puslinch Lake must be removed by March 15. 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). Puslinch Lake lies within FMZ 16.

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 16 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 Puslinch 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

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

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 4 official names on the water and its islands: 4 islands. A further 1 named point stands on the mainland shore.

Points on the shore 1

• McCormick Point

Nearby lakes

• Lake Belwood38 km away
• Conestogo Lake49 km away
• Lake Eugenia103 km away
• Lake Simcoe128 km away

All lakes

Questions about Puslinch Lake

• How deep is Puslinch Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 3 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Puslinch Lake?

  Its surface covers 1.6 square kilometers and it holds 5 islands. Of its 8 kilometers of shoreline, 7 kilometers is the mainland shore and 1 kilometer is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Puslinch Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name thirteen species, among them walleye, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, northern pike, yellow perch and black crappie. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name brook trout, muskellunge and rainbow trout.