Lake Belwood

Where Lake Belwood is

Lake Belwood lies in the County of Wellington, within the Township of Centre Wellington.

How deep is Lake Belwood?

The deepest mapped contour on Lake Belwood is 12.2 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 6 depth contours for Lake Belwood.

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.

Lake Belwood has 1 Lake Partner monitoring site. It has reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned, and is classified eutrophic.

The longest record is held by site 7581/1 at Mid north/west end, with phosphorus sampled several times a year between spring and fall over 6 years to 2019. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 26.36 micrograms per litre, within the eutrophic band, which begins at 20.

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 69 clarity readings at site 7581/1 give a median Secchi depth of 1.3 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 7581/1

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

Lake Belwood Weather

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

Lake Belwood weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Lake Belwood as a cool-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 Lake Belwood. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Fergus Shand Dam climate station, 3 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 614 hectares and its mean depth. The province’s records give no mean depth for Lake Belwood; the model uses 3.8 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 Lake Belwood carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Lake Belwood

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 21 fish species in Lake Belwood. The province’s other records for the lake name one further species, rainbow trout. It appears in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Northern Pikepike
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Largemouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Brown Bullheadcatfish
• Common Carpminnow

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 1 fish spawning record within the Lake Belwood outline: 1 yellow perch spawning area covering 0.16 hectares.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Yellow Perch1 area0.2 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 Lake Belwood run from 1948 to 1987 and hold 18 releases. Rainbow Trout account for most of the fish: 53,650 released in fifteen of the years between 1948 and 1968. The last recorded release was 24 northern pike subadults in 1987.

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

Fisheries Management Zone 16

Lake Belwood 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 Lake Belwood

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

Lake Belwood Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Lake Belwood 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). Lake Belwood 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 Lake Belwood 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

Lake Belwood contains one island in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, of 0.2 hectare, none of them named in the province’s register.

Nearby lakes

• Conestogo Lake32 km away
• Puslinch Lake38 km away
• Lake Eugenia64 km away
• Lake Simcoe102 km away

All lakes

Questions about Lake Belwood

• How deep is Lake Belwood?

  Its deepest charted contour is 12.2 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Lake Belwood?

  Its surface covers 6.1 square kilometers, with 26 kilometers of shoreline and 1 island.

• What fish are in Lake Belwood?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 21 species, among them smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, northern pike and yellow perch. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name rainbow trout.

• Is the water clear?

  The one monitoring site with a phosphorus status is classified eutrophic, the most nutrient-rich of the province’s three bands.