Obabika Lake

Where Obabika Lake is

Obabika Lake lies in the District of Sudbury and the District of Nipissing, with shoreline in the Municipality of Temagami.

How deep is Obabika Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Obabika Lake is 39.6 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 115 depth contours for Obabika 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.

No monitoring site on Obabika Lake is registered with the Lake Partner Program, so no phosphorus or clarity record exists for the lake.

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

Obabika Lake Weather

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

Obabika Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Obabika Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 12.6 meters against its maximum of 39.6.

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 Obabika 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 Climate climate station, 60 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 3,268 hectares and its mean depth of 12.6 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 Obabika Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Obabika Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 22 fish species in Obabika Lake.

Popular species in the province’s records

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

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 43 fish spawning records within the Obabika Lake outline, for two different species, and all of them are mapped below.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout33 areas26.5 ha
• Northern Pike10 areas3.9 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 Obabika Lake run from 1976 to 2001 and hold 6 releases. Lake Trout account for most of the fish: 20,585 released in five of the years between 1976 and 2001. The last recorded release was 450 lake trout adults in 2001.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for three species taken from Obabika Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Belfast 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 11

Obabika Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 11. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Obabika 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

Obabika Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Obabika 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). Obabika Lake lies within FMZ 11.

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 11 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 Obabika 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

Obabika Lake contains 67 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, one of them over 10 hectares and 35 under a tenth of a hectare.

Nearby lakes

• Lake Temagami21 km away
• Kukagami Lake38 km away
• Lady Evelyn Lake39 km away
• Net Lake40 km away

All lakes

Questions about Obabika Lake

• How deep is Obabika Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 39.6 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Obabika Lake?

  Its surface covers 32.7 square kilometers and it holds 67 islands. Of its 114 kilometers of shoreline, 95 kilometers is the mainland shore and 19 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Obabika Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 22 species, among them lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, northern pike, lake whitefish and yellow perch.