Porcupine Lake

Where Porcupine Lake is

Porcupine Lake lies in the District of Cochrane, within the City of Timmins.

How deep is Porcupine Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Porcupine Lake is 4.6 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 4 depth contours for Porcupine 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.

Porcupine Lake has 2 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Two have reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned. All are classified mesotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 7338/1 at N end, near college, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 10 years to 2024. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 18.81 micrograms per litre, within the mesotrophic band, which runs from 10 to 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 2 clarity readings at site 7338/1 give a median Secchi depth of 1.9 meters.

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

Porcupine Lake Weather

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

Porcupine Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Porcupine Lake 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 Porcupine Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Timmins A climate station, 17 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 276 hectares and its mean depth. The province’s records give no mean depth for Porcupine Lake; the model uses 2.2 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 Porcupine Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Porcupine Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 5 fish species in Porcupine Lake.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Rock Basssunfish

Stocking history

Ontario’s stocking records for Porcupine Lake run from 1987 to 1987 and hold 1 release. Walleye account for most of the fish: 400 released in 1987. The last recorded release was 400 walleye subadults in 1987.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for four species taken from Porcupine Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Whitney Twp., Cochrane 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 8

Porcupine Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 8. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Porcupine 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

Islands and names

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 1 official name on the water and its islands: . A further 1 named point stands on the mainland shore.

Points on the shore 1

• Deadman's Point

Nearby lakes

• Night Hawk Lake17 km away
• Frederick House Lake28 km away
• Watabeag Lake55 km away
• Mistinikon Lake66 km away

All lakes

Questions about Porcupine Lake

• How deep is Porcupine Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 4.6 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Porcupine Lake?

  Its surface covers 2.8 square kilometers, with 9 kilometers of shoreline.

• What fish are in Porcupine Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name five species, among them walleye, northern pike and yellow perch.

• Is the water clear?

  All two monitoring sites with a phosphorus status are classified mesotrophic, the middle of the province’s three bands.