Abram Lake

Where Abram Lake is

Abram Lake lies in the District of Kenora, within the Municipality of Sioux Lookout.

How deep is Abram Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Abram Lake is 36.6 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 72 depth contours for Abram 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.

Abram Lake has 2 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 Abram Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 16 fish species in Abram Lake. The province classes the lake as cold water. The record took effect on 7 December 2018, and it compiles what field biologists had reported by then. The province’s other records for the lake name three further species, among them lake trout and muskellunge. They appear in the records below.

Nine of the nineteen species in the province’s records

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

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 2 fish spawning records within the Abram Lake outline, for two species, all of them mapped areas. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Northern Pike1 area159.4 ha
• Walleye1 area3.2 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 Abram Lake run from 1930 to 1966 and hold 21 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 7,250,000 released in eleven of the years between 1947 and 1959. The last recorded release was 76 muskellunge juvenile/adults in 1966.

The province’s current stocking programme, recorded from 2016, lists no release into Abram Lake.

Eating the fish

The 2025 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for seven species taken from Abram Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in 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

Abram 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.

Islands and names

Abram Lake contains 31 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, three of them over 10 hectares and twelve under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 3 official names on the water and its islands: 2 islands. A further 3 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Points on the shore 3

• Boy Scout Point
• Neelands Point
• Sioux Lookout Point

Nearby lakes

• Pelican Lake8 km away
• Minnitaki Lake10 km away
• Dinorwic Lake68 km away
• Wabigoon Lake71 km away

All lakes

Questions about Abram Lake

• How deep is Abram Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 36.6 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Abram Lake?

  Its surface covers 24.6 square kilometers and it holds 31 islands. Of its 94 kilometers of shoreline, 71 kilometers is the mainland shore and 23 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Abram Lake?

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