Kakagi Lake

Where Kakagi Lake is

Kakagi Lake lies in the District of Kenora, with shoreline in the Township of Sioux Narrows-Nestor Falls.

How deep is Kakagi Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Kakagi Lake is 54.9 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 291 depth contours for Kakagi 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.

Kakagi Lake has 2 Lake Partner monitoring sites. One of them has reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned, and is classified oligotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 2218/2 at Mid lake, deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 3 years to 2018. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 5.47 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

Kakagi Lake Weather

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

Kakagi Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Kakagi Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 20.6 meters against its maximum of 54.9.

A deep lake separates into layers through the summer. Sunlight and wind warm and mix the upper few meters, and beneath a band of rapid cooling, the thermocline, the water stays cold through the whole season. A mean depth of 20.6 meters places most of Kakagi Lake’s volume in that cold layer, which is the condition lake trout and lake whitefish require.

No provincial monitoring station records water temperature on Kakagi Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Rawson Lake climate station, 46 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 11,225 hectares and its mean depth of 20.6 meters.

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

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Kakagi Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 34 fish species in Kakagi Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name one further species, walleye. It appears in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Muskellungepike
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Burbotcod
• Brown Bullheadcatfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 11 fish spawning records within the Kakagi Lake outline, for two different species, and all of them are mapped below. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout6 areas26.7 ha
• Muskellunge5 areas20.5 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 Kakagi Lake run from 1946 to 1962 and hold 12 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 5,200,000 released in four of the years between 1952 and 1957. The last recorded release was 10,000 lake trout fingerlings in 1962.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for seven species taken from Kakagi 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. 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 5

Kakagi Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 5. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Kakagi Lake

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.

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

Islands and names

Kakagi Lake contains 368 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, 27 of them over 10 hectares and 99 under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 5 official names on the water and its islands: five bays. A further 3 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 5

• Blacky Bay
• Emm Bay
• Muskie Bay
• Peninsula Bay
• Young Bay

Points on the shore 3

• Chase Point
• Cliff Point
• Tex Point

Nearby lakes

• Dryberry Lake37 km away
• Lake of the Woods46 km away
• Eagle Lake71 km away
• Black Sturgeon Lakes81 km away

All lakes

Questions about Kakagi Lake

• How deep is Kakagi Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 54.9 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Kakagi Lake?

  Its surface covers 112.3 square kilometers and it holds 368 islands. Of its 475 kilometers of shoreline, 250 kilometers is the mainland shore and 225 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Kakagi Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 34 species, among them lake trout, smallmouth bass, northern pike, muskellunge, lake whitefish and yellow perch. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name walleye.

• Is the water clear?

  The one monitoring site with a phosphorus status is classified oligotrophic, the clearest of the province’s three bands.