Red Lake

Where Red Lake is

Red Lake lies in the District of Kenora, within the Municipality of Red Lake.

How deep is Red Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Red Lake is 42.7 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 253 depth contours for Red 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.

Red Lake has 7 Lake Partner monitoring sites, none of which has yet reported phosphorus for the three years the province requires before a status is assigned.

Fish in Red Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 25 fish species in Red Lake. The province classes the lake as cool water. The record took effect on 17 January 2014, and it compiles what field biologists had reported by then. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, lake trout and muskellunge. They appear in the records below.

Nine of the 27 species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Saugerperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Rock Basssunfish
• Burbotcod

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 125 fish spawning records within the Red Lake outline, for eight species, all of them mapped areas. Three of the areas are one outline mapped for walleye, lake whitefish and cisco (lake herring) alike, and eight more are filed under more than one species. An outline filed for more than one species is drawn once, striped in each of their colours.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout79 areas151.9 ha
• Northern Pike13 areas28.5 ha
• Walleye9 areas14.0 ha
• Lake Whitefish5 areas11.9 ha
• Cisco (Lake Herring)4 areas9.8 ha
• Rainbow Smelt3 areas2.5 ha
• Northern Pike nursery3 areas240.9 ha
• Walleye nursery3 areas240.9 ha
• Yellow Perch2 areas45.8 ha
• Yellow Perch nursery2 areas239.8 ha
• White Sucker1 area1.8 ha
• White Sucker nursery1 area227.6 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 Red Lake run from 1947 to 2015 and hold 44 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 12,650,000 released in eleven of the years between 1947 and 1961. The last recorded release was 36,306 lake trout yearlings in 2015.

The province’s current stocking programme, recorded from 2019, lists 34,000 lake trout released into Red Lake between 2019 and 2019.

Eating the fish

The 2025 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for eight species taken from Red Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Dome Twp., Kenora 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 4

Red Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 4. 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. Zone-wide, Smelt may not be used as bait or possessed for use as bait.

Where a row reads zone-wide, the zone’s own season or limit above applies. Lake Trout: Only artificial lures may be used while angling for lake trout. Lake Trout: Only one barbless hook may be used while angling for lake trout.

Red Lake Ice Fishing

When the ice comes and goes

Ice has been recorded at Bruce Channel in 32 winters between 1956 and 1992. The median date of complete ice cover is November 22 and the median date of complete ice loss is May 7, a median season of 166 days.

The longest recorded season is 195 days in 1966-67, and the shortest is 148 days in 1990-91.

Averaged twenty winters at a time, the date of complete ice cover has barely moved: November 21 in the winters from 1960, and November 23 in those from 1980. Across the same two blocks the average season has gone from 171 days to 164.

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 Red Lake on any given day. Ontario publishes ice safety guidance for anyone going out on the ice, at ontario.ca.

Islands and names

Red Lake contains 201 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, 23 of them over 10 hectares and 45 under a tenth of a hectare. McKenzie Island, at 1,129 hectares, is larger than the next ten together, which cover 352.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 54 official names on the water and its islands: 14 islands, 24 bays, six narrows and one river. A further 3 named points stand on the mainland shore. The register records the origin of one name: Aiken's Bay, “Named after a local family who has lived in the area for 5 generations.”

Bays 24

• Aiken's Bay
• Archer Bay
• Biron Bay
• East Bay
• Gold Seekers Bay
• Hall Bay
• Howey Bay
• Hoyles Bay
• Martin Bay
• McFinley Bay
• McManus Bay
• McNeely Bay
• Middle Bay
• Muskrat Bay
• Pancake Bay
• Pickerel Bay
• Pipestone Bay
• Rahill Bay
• Sadler Bay
• Scott Bay
• Slate Bay
• St. Paul's Bay
• Trout Bay
• Wolf Bay

Harbours, cuts and narrows 6

• East Narrows
• Middle Narrows
• Pipestone Narrows
• Post Narrows
• West Narrows
• Wolf Narrows

Points on the shore 3

• Abino Point
• Forestry Point
• Johnson's Point

Nearby lakes

• Eagle Lake163 km away
• Dryberry Lake168 km away
• Wabigoon Lake174 km away
• Pelican Lake176 km away

All lakes

Questions about Red Lake

• How deep is Red Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 42.7 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Red Lake?

  Its surface covers 165.5 square kilometers and it holds 201 islands. Of its 592 kilometers of shoreline, 428 kilometers is the mainland shore and 164 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Red Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 25 species, among them walleye, northern pike, lake whitefish and yellow perch. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name lake trout and muskellunge.