Vermilion Lake

Where Vermilion Lake is

Vermilion Lake lies in the District of Sudbury, with shoreline in the City of Greater Sudbury.

How deep is Vermilion Lake?

Vermilion Lake reaches a maximum recorded depth of 13.0 meters, determined from 18,957 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.

Vermilion Lake has 5 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Two have reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned. One of those sites is classified oligotrophic and one mesotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 5657/3 at North part of bay, CGS VER-3, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 7 years to 2017. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 9.63 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.

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

Vermilion Lake Weather

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

Vermilion Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Vermilion 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 Vermilion Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Sudbury A climate station, 47 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 1,120 hectares and its mean depth. The province’s records give no mean depth for Vermilion Lake; the model uses 4.0 meters, estimated from its deepest mapped contour.

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 Vermilion Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Vermilion Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 19 fish species in Vermilion Lake.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Bluegillsunfish
• Brown Bullheadcatfish

Stocking history

Ontario’s stocking records for Vermilion Lake run from 1952 to 2002 and hold 11 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 1,249,420 released in seven of the years between 1960 and 2002. The last recorded release was 12,000 walleye fingerlings in 2002.

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for five species taken from Vermilion Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Fairbank Twp., Sudbury 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. 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 10

Vermilion Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 10. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Vermilion 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

Vermilion Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Vermilion Lake must be removed by March 31. 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). Vermilion Lake lies within FMZ 10.

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 10 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 Vermilion 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

Vermilion Lake contains two islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, of 3.8 hectares, none of them named in the province’s register. One of them lies mostly inside wetland the province’s Wetland With Significance dataset maps as marsh. The largest of these, at 3.8 hectares, falls inside the Vermillion River Delta wetland.

Nearby lakes

• Fairbank Lake6 km away
• Windy Lake9 km away
• Long Lake29 km away
• Lake Panache32 km away

All lakes

Questions about Vermilion Lake

• How deep is Vermilion Lake?

  Its maximum recorded depth is 13 meters.

• How big is Vermilion Lake?

  Its surface covers 11.2 square kilometers and it holds 2 islands. Of its 33 kilometers of shoreline, 31 kilometers is the mainland shore and 2 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Vermilion Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name nineteen species, among them walleye, smallmouth bass, northern pike, lake whitefish and yellow perch.