Fairbank Lake

Where Fairbank Lake is

Fairbank Lake lies in the District of Sudbury, within the City of Greater Sudbury.

How deep is Fairbank Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Fairbank Lake is 42.7 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 19 depth contours for Fairbank 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.

Fairbank Lake has 8 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Six have reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned. All are classified oligotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 1417/2 at Stn 2, E Mid-lake, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 24 years to 2025. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 5.27 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.

The 200 clarity readings at site 1417/2 give a median Secchi depth of 7.3 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 1417/2

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

Fairbank Lake Weather

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

Fairbank Lake weather

Water temperature

No provincial monitoring station records water temperature on Fairbank 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, 51 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 707 hectares and its mean depth. The province’s records give no mean depth for Fairbank Lake; the model uses 16.5 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 Fairbank Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Fairbank Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records list no species for Fairbank Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name four species, among them lake trout, northern pike and smallmouth bass. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 1 fish spawning record within the Fairbank Lake outline: 1 lake trout record of under 100 square meters each. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout1 records0 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.

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for four species taken from Fairbank Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Fairbank & Trill Twps., 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. Where the guide has no result yet for certain contaminants at a location, it sets a precautionary limit of 16 meals a month. 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

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

Fisheries management zones around Fairbank Lake

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

Fairbank Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Fairbank 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). Fairbank 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 Fairbank 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

Fairbank Lake contains nine islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, one of them over 10 hectares and one under a tenth of a hectare. Fairbank Island, at 18 hectares, is larger than the next eight together, which cover 14.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 11 official names on the water and its islands: 8 islands and two bays.

Bays 2

• Hixon's Bay
• Vermilion Bay

Nearby lakes

• Vermilion Lake6 km away
• Windy Lake14 km away
• Lake Panache26 km away
• Long Lake27 km away

All lakes

Questions about Fairbank Lake

• How deep is Fairbank Lake?

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

• How big is Fairbank Lake?

  Its surface covers 7.1 square kilometers and it holds 9 islands. Of its 30 kilometers of shoreline, 24 kilometers is the mainland shore and 6 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• Is the water clear?

  All six monitoring sites with a phosphorus status are classified oligotrophic, the clearest of the province’s three bands.